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EDITED BY 

WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A. M., LL. D. 



Volume LI II 



INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION SERIES. 

12x1X0, cloth, unxfoxrm binding. 



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INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION 8ERIE8 



DEYELOPIENT OF THE CHILD 
IN LATER INFANCY 

BEING PART II OF 

THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD 



BY 

GABRIEL COMPAYR:^ 

RECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LYONS 



TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY 

MARY E. WILSON 

B. L. SMITH COLLEGE 

MEMBER OF THE GRADUATE SEMINARY IN CHILD STUDY 

UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA 



J J 5 J 51 

o 50- 

:> 5 J ■» 



NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1902 



LBnjs 



Copyright, 1902, 
Br D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 



Elkctrotyped and Printed 

AT THE ApPLETON PrESS, U. S. A. 



• » , ■» • « 

« « • • 

« « «* « • 



PuUished July, 1902 



EDITOE'S PEEFACE 



The present volume contains tlie second half 
of the translation of the work of Prof. Gabriel 
Compayr^, rector of the University of Lyons, 
entitled " L'E volution Intellectnelle et Morale de 
TEnfant/' The first part (printed in Volume 
XXXV of this series) treats of the newly born 
infant, of his first forms of activity and the begin- 
nings of the five senses — sight, hearing, smell, taste, 
and touch. Besides these, he takes up the subject 
of the first emotions, such as fear, love, and selfish- 
ness, and their expression, memory, imagination, 
and consciousness. 

The present volume treats of the functions that 
develop into prominence in later infancy, namely, (1) 
Educative instincts, such as imitation and curiosity 
(Chapter I) ; (2) judgment and reasoning (II) ; (3) 
learning to talk (III); (4) activity dependent on 
the will: walking and playing (IV); (5) develop- 
ment of moral sense (V) ; (6) faults and virtues of 
childhood (VI) ; (7) mental alienation in childhood 
(VII) ; (8) feeling of selfhood and sense of person- 
ality (VIII). 

Let us consider in its outlines the problem that 
all child study has before it. In general its pre- 



vi LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

liminary object is to learn how the infant gets 
possession of his body so that he can use his senses 
for obtaining a knowledge of the external world, and 
so that he can use his motive powers in reaction 
upon the world, making of his muscular system an 
instrument to change or modify his environment 
and adapt it to his desires. This, as we see, in- 
volves an investigation of two phases of infant 
activity: the one directed inward — the growth of 
the intellect; and the other directed outward — the 
reaction upon the environment, the growth of the 
power to control matter by the will. The former 
develops out of the sentient side of the mind and 
the latter out of the motor side. 

Both of these provinces of activity contribute to 
the development of the selfhood of the infant, and 
we could well say that he reveals that selfhood to 
us by the mode and manner in which he uses his 
senses to obtain knowledge and his motor organs to 
react upon his environment. By the same acts that 
he reveals himself to us he becomes conscious of 
himself. 

In another way of describing this process, we 
may claim that child study deals chiefly with the 
development of character. The character is the 
aggregate expression of the will. It is not the mere 
desire or aspiration, but rather the actual volition 
— what one has willed — that reveals the personality, 
that is to say, the character. 

It is taken for granted that the self may change 
his character by willing better or worse things. 
The character is therefore not a finality ; the self is 
lord over its expression of itself, and can modify or 



EDITOR'S PREFACE vii 

change not only its particular but its general modes 
of manifestation. 

It is evident that all facts relating to the con- 
scious modification of character are of the highest 
value in the study of infant development. In Mrs. 
Ewing's Story of a Short Life a sudden change in 
the character is described. The invalid child sud- 
denly assumes the mastership over his evil humours 
and deliberately sets aside his selfishness and sub- 
ordinates it. In that case a short life contained far 
more in it than is contained in an average long life. 

This furnishes a third province of child study, 
of even greater value than the two already named. 

Taking a closer survey of the first province of 
infant development — namely, in that of sense-per- 
ception — it is important to determine with accuracy 
the data of the first manifestations of the senses of 
sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. A careful 
consideration of the concrete evidence in each case 
will throw much light on the proper treatment of 
the newly born infant. 

Careful investigation will fix the average date 
of the growth of perception from mere sensation — 
the beginning of the knowledge of objects and the 
cessation of the period of mere immersion in sub- 
jective feelings. Preyer has recorded his sagacious 
observations on this point. 

In the first month he notes : A slight sensibility 
to light five minutes after birth; pleasure in the 
sight of a rose-coloured curtain and eyes opened 
and shut when the child is spoken to (twenty-fifth 
day) ; movement of a light followed (twenty-third 
day) ; hears whistling (twelfth day) ; licks sugar 



Viu LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

(first day) ; laughs, opening and half shutting the 
eyes (fourth week). In the second month he 
records the pleasure of the child in the sight of 
coloured tassels (forty-second day) ; following any 
bright object with the eyes (seventh week) ; tones 
of the piano give pleasure in the eighth week; 
child utters its first consonant sound, m. In the 
third month shows his recognition of faces (ninth 
week) ; begins to notice ticking of watch and dis- 
criminate one sound from another (ninth week) ; 
turns his head towards sounding object (twelfth 
week) ; begins to balance his head (eleventh week), 
and gains some control of it (thirteenth week). 

But Preyer's child does not grasp things with 
contraposition of the thumb until the fourteenth 
week, shows conscious will-power in holding up his 
head not earlier than the sixteenth week, and sits 
up, his back being supported, in the seventeenth 
week. It is towards the close of the fourth month 
that he begins to imitate. 

The arrival at the power of imitation marks the 
beginning of a higher order of mind. Low as it 
stands in the theory of education, it marks an epoch 
in the development of the human soul out of the 
animal. It marks the entrance upon self-conscious 
education. 

In imitation the child notices the activity of 
another being and recognises that activity as some- 
thing proceeding from an energy or power akin to 
the power he possesses. It is analogous to his 
power at least in some slight degree, for, see, he 
can produce it himself! Even if it is a steam 
whistle that he imitates, he feels to some degree 



EDITOR'S PREFACE ix 

this identity between Ms power and that of the 
steam-engine. If it is the action of an animal that 
he imitates, there is a deeper and fuller identity ; 
if that of a human being, he may add to the ex- 
ternal pantomime also the internal feelings and 
meanings which he interprets or reads into the act 
of another. 

The infant proves to himself the possession of 
a power manifested in an object of his experience by 
imitating the action in which he is interested. It 
is evident, therefore, that imitation is a kind of 
spiritual assimilation, a digesting and making one's 
own of the act of another. He is not conscious of 
his purpose, but he does recognise his act of imita- 
tion as a proof of his own power, and, as such, a 
revelation of his selfhood. 

The boy can imitate the sound of a steam-engine, 
or of a bear, or the voice and manner of his elder 
brother, of a soldier or a laborer. His imitation is 
a sort of identification of himself with a part of his 
environment, and, conversely, a production within 
himself of that part of his environment and — what 
I have just now called a spiritual assimilation — 
the making over or repeating of the environment 
within the self, and, so to speak, a realization in 
some small degree of the universality and infini- 
tude of one's human nature, since it is shown to be 
equal to reproducing for its own behoof what is 
foreign to itself. 

By this act of imitation he becomes vividly con- 
scious of his own causative power as contrasted 
with outside forces in which he has no concern. 
Hence, by the act of imitation he grows towards the 



X LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

feeling of responsibility and arrives at the concept 
of selfhood or the ego. 

The act as performed by another is none of his. 
The act as imitated by himself is his own and he 
alone is responsible for it. Imitation is therefore 
an act of the will. 

Imitation is not only important as an evolution 
of the feeling of and the concept of the inner self- 
hood, but it is also quite as important as leading to 
a consciousness of a social whole. For in imita- 
ting the deed of another, one adopts an example or 
model. And in imitating the use and wont of 
society — its customs and usages — the individual 
voluntarily makes himself a member of the social 
whole, and thereby enters institutional life. From 
being a mere individualist, a mere savage, he be- 
comes a civilized being. He learns how to control 
himself and emancipates himself from mere exter- 
nal authority. This becomes evident when we con- 
sider that imitation is the chief means by which 
the infant evolves the power of using language. 

Contemporaneous with the development of sen- 
sibility and the acquirement of perception through 
interpreting mere subjective feelings by space, 
time, and causality into knowledge of the environ- 
ment, arises the reaction upon the external world — 
the growth of the power to produce an effect upon 
some portion of the environment and modify it or 
change it. 

Preyer has noted for us many of the steps of 
this process as he observed it in his boy Axel. In 
the nineteenth week he noticed the pleasure that 
his child manifested in crumpling paper, tearing 



EDITOR'S PREFACE XI 

it, or rolling it up, delighted with the noise made 
as well as with his own power to determine the 
shape of an external thing. He made continuous 
experiments, from the eighth month on, which had 
for their result and apparently for their purpose, 
the drawing of the line of distinction between his 
body and his environment. He experimented with 
his toes and studied his feet and legs (thirty-fifth 
week). He grasped at his image in a mirror; 
turned over when laid on his face (forty-third 
week) ; tried to sit without support (fortieth week) ; 
attempted to walk (forty-first week) ; threw down 
objects and looked at them to see the effect on 
them (forty-seventh week) ; noticed the difference 
in sound made on his plate when struck by his 
spoon if he damped its vibrations by touching it 
with his hand (forty-sixth week) ; learned to inter- 
est himself in objects (men sawing wood) a hun- 
dred feet away (fifty -first week) ; learned to carry 
biscuit to his mouth and to drink from a glass 
(fifty-second week) ; struck the keys of the piano 
(thirteenth month) ; raised himself by a chair (six- 
tieth week) ; took off and put on the cover of a can 
and became so interested in this discovery that he 
repeated it till the record showed seventy-nine 
times (fourteenth month) ; pulled out and pushed 
in a drawer, turned the leaves of a book (fifty- 
eighth week) ; ran alone (four hundred and fifty- 
seventh day). 

In learning language there are two aids. The 
child notices some prominent feature in an object 
and designates it by some imitation of its sound or 
description of some other feature (Axel called his 



xii LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

nurse wola because she was always saying ya-wol 
or yes-yes), and his parent or nurse adopts his des- 
ignation and in talking with him uses the name 
or word that he has invented. The parent thus 
interprets the child^s rudimentary beginnings of 
speech. On the other hand, the child is constantly 
observant of the language of people about him and 
learns slowly but constantly how to interpret some 
new word or put some new meaning into a word 
already familiar. 

Preyer records the first word of Axel as aUa, 
which he used when taken out by the nurse for his 
daily walk or ride, and for a variety of actions 
connected analogically with going out, such, for 
example, as the turning out of a light. His second 
word was heiss (German word for hot, used the 
fifteenth month). In the twenty-third month this 
word heiss is used as a sentence meaning it is hot, 
spoken of his drink and also of the stove. 

The appearance of the use of the judgment in 
speech — the affirmation of a predicate of a subject 
— marks an epoch in acquiring language, for with 
predication comes the expression of the exclusively 
spiritual thought - distinctions of universal, par- 
ticular, and individual — logical distinctions of in- 
finite importance to the mind, which, however, are 
not found in Nature (or in the time and space en- 
vironment of the soul). The predicate is relatively 
a universal — i. e., as compared with the subject of 
the judgment or sentence. The drink is hot means 
that the object— namely, the drink— falls under the 
class of hot objects. One general class may con- 
tain many classes less general. Some hot objects 



EDITOR'S PREFACE xiii 

are hot water; some, hot milk; some, hot por- 
ridge, etc.; but all these fall under the general 
class, all hot objects, which is the universal, while 
they are the particular. The particular in logic is 
indicated by the word some or its equivalent. The 
subject that is not used as a predicate is called the 
individual or singular in logic. Thus in Axe?s 
first judgment the terms stand as follows: hot is 
the universal ; drink is the common name for his 
liquid food, and here it is subsumed (or included) 
under hot, and is therefore a particular ; lastly, the 
food which he is holding in his hand and tasting 
with his tongue, and to which he gives the general 
name drink, is the individual that is not predi- 
cated. 

In this analysis of the mental operation which 
goes on in the act of predication we find therefore 
three terms and two acts of subsumption, but they 
are not all explicitly stated in AxeFs first judg- 
ment. He says hot, omitting drink and the copula 
is. Before this he had heard his food named many 
times, the name drink being used by his nurse. 
As the name indicates a class, it holds in it an 
implicit judgment: this object before our senses 
is drink. For the general name always implies 
subsumption not only when predicated of the indi- 
vidual object, but even when assumed of it. The 
child looks from the window and says horse on 
seeing a wagon drawn by a horse in the road. His 
full thought expressed in words would be : " Look, 
nurse, and see ! Tliere is a horse." At an earlier 
stage of learning to talk he might have said cat, 
meaning that he saw a four-legged living and 
2 



XIV LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

moving animal which, he classified with cat, the 
only animal familiar to him hitherto, and which 
he had learned to name. 

The child is quite frequently applying the 
names he has learned for his familiar objects to 
new objects in which he finds any of the features 
by which he recognises the familiar ones. Seeing 
a new quadruped, he gives it the name cat or dog, 
because he catches sight of the four legs and feet. 
So the first cow or horse may be called dog or cat, or 
vice versa, according to the order of his experience. 

The three terms, universal, particular, and sin- 
gular, are fully expressed only in the syllogism. 
This (the use of the syllogism) presupposes a far 
higher degree of analyzing his consciousness than 
the child possesses. But all the steps are there in 
the mind, although not expressed in speech. 

An infant that I knew, who had been brought 
up on a ranch and had often seen and heard cows, 
heard the mellow sound of a distant steam whistle 
and said softly to herself, tow (coiv). The act of 
the mind took the form of the second figure of the 
syllogism (the figure of identification) : (a) Cows are 
objects that make this soft lowing sound ; (b) some- 
thing is making this soft lowing sound ; (c) it is a 
cow. The conclusion cow was all that was ex- 
pressed, but it was enough to reveal the child's 
mental operation.* 

When the infant first begins to talk he uses 
only single words, and these are name-words. 



* See International Education Series, yol. xxxvii, p. 195. Com- 
pare Chapter IX of the same work. 



EDITOR'S PREFACE XV 

After a very little while there begin to be sub- 
sumptions of new objects under the name- words 
that are used for the already familiar objects. 
Then there begin to be adjectives used so that the 
mind expresses not only the consciousness of the 
object, but also of some quality, mark, or other 
determination predicated of the object — thus form- 
ing a complex idea and attempting to express it. 
Then next there is the expression of more steps in 
the mental process, the connecting of two judg- 
ments, or propositions, causally; as, for example, 
dog, bite, meaning : this is a dog, he will bite as he 
did the other day). 

Here is the important consideration that makes 
the use of language the object of all objects in ob- 
serving the growth of the intellect in the develop- 
ment of the infant. The act of perception, as ex- 
pressed in language, always implies that the infant 
sees each and every object as a specimen of a class, 
and gives the class-name to it in talking about it. 
Let the dog be called Tray, instead of dog, and the 
child will use Tray as a class-name until he gets 
beyond the expression of the universal and begins 
the expression of the particidar. After this he will 
begin to understand proper names as individual 
designations. 

It is evident, therefore, that the infant thinks of 
his object as a result, and not as something utterly 
unique and causa sui. A class of objects implies a 
similar origin to all that it includes: drink is, the 
name for the food of yesterday, the food of to-day, 
and for the food that will be provided to-morrow. 
In using the word drink the child summons swiftly 



XVI LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

before it the food-producing agency of the house 
(the nurse who prepares it, the ingredients that 
she uses, and the heating operation, etc. — all 
the contents of his experience on this score), and 
makes the general word drink stand, not uniquely 
for this particular cup full of drink, and only that, 
but for this drink, and yesterday's drink, and to- 
morrow's drink, and for all drinks that are the 
same in material ingredients (material), combined 
in this manner (formal cause), for this object or 
purpose (final cause), and prepared by the nurse or 
some other person (efficient cause). 

The fact that language deals only with general 
names of objects, actions, qualities, and conditions 
has been often noted ever since Timon the Sino- 
graph laid so much emphasis on it. But the reason 
for this has not been so often considered. It in- 
volves the reason why intellect is the ruler over the 
world ; why mind knows things in their causes ; 
why it knows a divine Creator as a personal reason. 

For language proves that the intellect, even its 
feeblest beginnings, seizes objects not as absolute 
and original beings, but as results of a causal pro- 
cess. It ever goes behind the immediate object 
before it to seize, as well as it may, its cause, and 
it names not the particular object, but its class ; 
it names not its class as a mere collection or aggre- 
gate of similar things, but as effects of a produc- 
ing cause. Looking towards the beginning of the 
causal process it sees an Original Cause as presup- 
posed. The very structure of the mind that uses 
language is therefore theistic and cause-seeking. 

Cause-seeking mind seeks an adequate explana- 



EDITOR'S PREFACE xvii 

tion; and adequacy implies all of tlie four steps 
that Aristotle named — material, formal, final, and 
efficient causes. Two of these causes may be known 
as dependent and two as independent. The depend- 
ent are contingent, and are known through expe- 
rience. They relate to the material manifestation, 
and concern the material and the form in time and 
space. Two causes are known a priori, and relate 
to the final cause or purpose and the efficient cause 
or creative power. The efficient cause is seen by 
the mind to be necessary, and not contingent or de- 
pendent, for without it there could be no power 
transmitted in the causal series, and hence no effects 
or phenomena. So, too, the purpose of the whole 
must be the revelation of the primal efficient cause 
in its effects, and whatever exists as phenomena in 
space and time must have its explanation in the 
final cause or purpose of the absolute efficient cause. 

Thus mind has two kinds of knowledge— ^r5i(, 
of phenomena by aid of the senses and actual expe- 
rience ; second, of. absolute being. 

It would be out of place or far-fetched to con- 
sider these two kinds of knowing here in the study 
of the infant, were it not for the fact that language, 
dealing as it does in its judgment and syllogism 
with the relation of the individual, particular, and 
universal in the process of subsumption — language 
being everywhere a statement of subsumption — 
reveals to us the hidden process of thinking, and 
shows it to be always an attempt to connect its ob- 
ject in a causal series, and always to presuppose., an 
ultimate originating cause, as well as a final pur- 
pose in all causality. 



xviii LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

The history of the human race reveals every- 
where three great primary products of interest and 
of highest study — namely, religion, art and litera- 
ture, science. Over against these are the secondary 
products of its industry in forming (1) civil insti- 
tutions and (2) the arts and skills that provide for 
creature comfort and communication. 

Child study has to look at its materials as the 
crude beginnings of these ^ve great interests of 
humanity. 

To base civilization on child study is to make 
the tree less important than the acorn, the man less 
important than the child, the race less important 
than the individual. 

The child must be studied in the light of the 
complete civilization of his race. The prophecies 
of his greatness are doubtless in him, and may be 
discovered to a greater or less extent by proper in- 
vestigation. Certainly, the child cannot be ex- 
plained by himself without the light of these social 
products, any more than his first attempts to talk 
are to be explained except by psychology and logic. 

The most important difference between Com- 
payr^'s treatment and that of Preyer is to be found 
in the order in which the development of the will 
is taken up. Preyer takes up in the first part the 
senses, in the second part the will, and in the third 
part the intellect. Both agree in presenting first 
the development of the senses — seeing, hearing, 
taste, and touch. Preyer treats of the evolution of 
the will-power in its unconscious beginnings, next 
of its conscious activity in imitative movements, 
and finally of its expressive movements, which reach 



EDITOR'S PREFACE xix 

their completest form in gestures purposely made 
to express internal meaning. He then takes up in 
the third part the learning to talk, while Professor 
Compayr^ treats of the art of learning to talk before 
taking up the voluntary activity, and especially the 
development of the moral sense, which is a matter 
of the will quite as much as a matter of the intel- 
lect. On account of this arrangement, Preyer has 
made less account of the development of the moral 
sense than Compayr^. Both works end with a con- 
sideration of the development of the feeling of self- 
hood. It is clear that Professor Compayre agrees 
with Preyer in the view that the child intellect 
makes language, and not that language makes the 
intellect. 

An excellent point made by Preyer is, that the 
intellect develops through ideas of space, time, and 
causality. But one cannot admit that he fully ap- 
preciates the significance of these ideas in the in- 
tellect. For instance, he does not note the fact that 
even in the lowest practical use of the ideas of 
space and time the child perceives the infinitude of 
extension implied. The child always thinks of any 
duration as preceded by another duration — that is 
to say, time is only preceded by itself, and hence is 
infinite. The infinite is limited by itself, and this 
is not a limitation, but an affirmation. To be limited 
in a finite sense requires that something shall be 
bounded by something else different from it. So in 
regard to space, the child thinks special limitations 
as existing in space, and as having an indefinite 
space beyond them — that is to say, the child shows 
by his actions that he presupposes space to be in- 



XX LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

finite ; that space is of such a nature as to be limited 
only through itself. It is the same thing as saying 
that all its limitations affirm it or continue it. 

This twofold idea of the infinite is a most 
important consideration in dealing with the intel- 
lect. Even in the case of the animal his practical 
dealings with his experience show that this presup- 
position of the infinitude of space and time is pres- 
ent with him, although unconscious. He acts upon 
it, but does not become conscious of the form of 
his action. 

Of still more importance than the ideas of time 
and space is the idea of causality, already adverted 
to in discussing general terms in language. In the 
idea of time we have sequence and antecedence — we 
have succession of one event upon another. But 
the idea of time does not involve a bond of connec- 
tion between the antecedent and the consequent. It 
is causalty that furnishes this idea. The idea of 
cause contains succession — that is to say, separation 
in time — but it contains besides this separation also 
the unity of the antecedent with the consequent. 
For causality regards one being as the originator of 
another ; a first being furnishes a ground or reason 
for a second. Causality contains the idea of the 
transference of one^s being to another. The cause 
sends an influence out upon some other being, mod- 
ifying it. 

An analysis of the idea of cause finds these and 
other wonderful things in it. The activity of a 
cause proceeds beyond itself to another, but its 
activity is its own. There must be origination or 
else there is no cause. This Origination means that 



EDITOR'S PREFACE xxi 

there is an absolute beginning of something. But 
the beginning is the activity of the cause within 
itself. The idea of cause, therefore, involves the 
highest of all ideas — namely, that of self -activity. 
Take self-activity out of cause and there is left 
nothing but effect. A bad metaphysics often ex- 
plains the idea of a causal series as a series in which 
every link is the effect of the preceding, and no link 
is the originator of anything new. This destroys 
the idea of causality, because it makes the entire 
series an effect and denies origination as belonging 
to any member of the series. In this the concep- 
tion is that the causal influence is received and 
transmitted by the entire series, but that the causal 
influence comes entirely from outside of the series. 
The cause in this case is transcendental — that is to 
say, its originating ^action is entirely beyond the 
realm of experience, which deals only with results. 
The point of interest is, that the ordinary mental 
operation of connecting phenomena with one another 
by the idea of cause presupposes a transcendental 
idea, the idea of self-activity, entirely out of and 
beyond the causal series. 

That bad system of metaphysics also endeavours 
to get rid of the idea of self -activity. In its analysis 
of causal phenomena it therefore denies the power 
to originate to each and every member of the causal 
series and asserts that the causal influence comes 
from beyond, but its object in this appears to be 
the avoidance of the idea of pure causal influence ; 
it thinks to escape the concept of self-activity alto- 
gether. In this we see that it has stultified itself, 
because in eliminating the idea of causality from 



xxil LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

the concrete series of events in experience it has 
reduced them all to effects, pure and simple, and if 
these effects are without a transcendental cause 
that originates the influence that is transmitted by 
the series, then it follows that it is incorrect to 
describe the members of the series as effects, for 
surely that which has no cause is not an effect. 
But without a cause the unity of the series van- 
ishes and there is no connection between any mem- 
ber of the series and its antecedent. One follows 
another in time, but is not connected with its ante- 
cedent by a causal influence. Since no member of 
the series is a cause, and consequently no member 
of the series is an effect, the denial of a transcen- 
dental cause has resulted in the denial of all 
causality. 

Without the idea of causality, all knowledge, all 
thought, all science, collapses entirely. There is 
nothing in any one observation which leads us to 
inquire for its explanation in another observation. 
There is no dependence of one thing upon another 
whatever. The most startling result of this con- 
clusion is the production of a spurious theory of 
idealism — a result evidently seen by Mr. Preyer, or 
at least by the philosophic thinkers whom he fol- 
lows in his theory of the importance of space, time, 
and causality as the basis of the intellect. 

Each sense perception implies, in the first place, 
a sensation, an act of some one or more of the 
senses. Secondly, it implies the perception of the 
dependence of the sensation upon an object outside 
of it. Without the causal idea no sense-impression 
could be interpreted as the perception of an ex- 



EDITOR'S PREFACE xxiii 

ternal object. The feeling would be entirely sub- 
jective. It is unnecessary to mention further that 
there could not even be a subjective feeling without 
presupposing the idea of causality, because even a 
subjective feeling discriminates between a subject 
which thinks or perceives and the pain or pleasure 
or other feeling which is its object. 

The feeling of the ego and of personality is 
closely identified with the rise of moral responsi- 
bility, which is perhaps even more important than 
the consciousness of the presuppositions of causality 
which have been dwelt on here in the discussion of 
the psychology of language. Philosophical insight 
comes to the support of the doctrine of morals and 
religion, and in the long run a lack of philosophical 
insight will disturb the foundations of both. If the 
feeling of personal responsibility did not exist in 
the soul of the infant, he could receive no moral or 
religious education. We have already discussed 
some of the phases of this feeling of responsibility. 
If there were several egos not subordinated to a 
genuine higher self, and if these egos held sway in 
the soul one after the other, there would be no 
common consciousness and no feeling of a pervad- 
ing personality. The sway of one ego would be 
opaque or impervious to the preceding and suc- 
ceeding states of the soul, and what happened 
during its sway would not be chargeable to the 
reign or sway of a previous ego or to that of a 
subsequent ego. Students of abnormal psychology 
often get into some confusion with regard to what 
constitutes an ego. The ego is not responsible for 
the vital processes of the body, except in so far as 



XXIV LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

it deliberately controls them througli some means 
or agency. What happens during one's sleep, or in 
a dream, is not chargeable to the ego, so a tem- 
porary or even a permanent state of insanity is not 
considered moral action, and the doer is not held 
responsible for it. 

In the case of what are called diseases of the 
personality and in which there is a complete lapse 
of the meihory of one's past life and the commence- 
ment of a new life — almost the same thing as the 
wiping out of the pages of one's history and the 
beginning of a new career — there is often a com- 
plete moral responsibility during each life ; but the 
moral relations that are dependent upon the con- 
necting of the present with the past vanish from 
consideration. The new personality forgets his 
family ties and his duties as completely as if they 
had never existed. He forms new family ties, 
illegal and immoral, but without any consciousness 
of criminality or immorality. In such cases as 
these the memory of the past is likely to return at 
some epoch, and the personality in that case effects 
a synthesis of its past life with its present one, and 
the third state of the personality continues both. 

It has always been considered possible by a cer- 
tain school of thinkers that one may in certain 
exalted states of the mind recover the memory of 
what had happened to one in a preconscious life. 
With such a memory there would not be connected 
a consciousness of moral responsibility. Many of 
our recollections of childish errors and misdeeds 
are understood and explained by us as not '2^7?? -moral, 
but as un-m.oralj as made by us when our conscious- 



EDITOR'S PREFACE XXV 

ness covered a too small portion of the sphere of 
our practical activity to bring it under the scope of 
conscience. For we are not responsible for conse- 
quences that we did not intend. An infant of three 
or four years old may fire off a gun that kills a 
human being, but he is not held responsible for his 
deed, because he does not understand the causal 
connections of his deed, and he is responsible only 
in so far as his consciousness of these causal condi- 
tions extend. 

The personality is not constituted by memory, 
but memory is an essential constituent in legal and 
moral responsibility. 

Again, personality is not a consciousness of the 
body, and must not be confounded with the feeling 
of self that is possessed by the animal and by the 
human being before he has developed his intellect 
and his will. What Preyer calls lower centres — 
that is to say, those which occasion the three kinds 
of movements, impulsive, reflex, and instinctive — 
are not connected with the moral self or the true 
personality, and consequently are not pervaded 
with the sense of responsibility. 

The sense of responsibility is connected with the 
checking of the lower centres — those of the im- 
pulsive, reflex, and instinctive movements. It has 
been suggested by an acute student of cerebro- 
physiology that the white matter of the brain deals 
wholly with inhibiting the lower centres ; and if 
inhibiting means the shaping of the action of the 
lower centres, this view seems very plausible. The 
sculptor inhibits with his chisel the various por- 
tions of marble which overlay the ideal form which 



xxvi LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

lie wislies to bring out. The sculptor of character 
inhibits all activities and all portions of activity 
which do not reveal the moral ideal. The inhibi- 
tion is limited to checking the passions, desires, and 
impulses which reveal an immoral selfhood. The 
inhibitions of the soul may be thought to develop 
an organ — namely, the cortex by which the person- 
ality acts on the lower centres. What is left to act 
is only the natural forces in so far as they reveal 
the moral selfhood. These so-called lower centres 
of which Preyer speaks — namely, the impulsive, the 
reflex, and the instinctive centres of motion — are 
not egos or personalities, but dependent beings, so 
connected with the body that they cannot well be 
conceived apart from it. 

In bringing forward the second volume of this 
translation the publishers congratulate themselves 
on furnishing for that wide class of teachers who 
are desirous to see the results of child study, rather 
than interest themselves as experts in the dry de- 
tails, the work of a writer distinguished for good 
taste and sound judgment — one who selects for dis- 
cussion those things which are significant, and dis- 
cards or passes in silence the insignificant. They 
believe that a consideration of these topics under the 
guide of a master like Professor Compayr^ will be 
a substantial aid to the work of the school-room. 

Miss Wilson desires to acknowledge the assist- 
ance of Prof. Fdlicien Victor Paget for material 
assistance in the translation of this work. 

W. T. Harris. 

Washington, D. C, June, 190S. 



ALPHABETICAL LIST 
OF AUTHOEITIES QUOTED 



Allen, Grant, i, 119. 
Allgemeine Zeitschrift fiir Psy- 

chiatrie, ii, 254. 
Annales de charite, Berlin, 1853, 

ii, 254. 
Annales de la faculte des lettres 

de Bordeaux, i, 82. 
Annales d'oculistique, Bruxelles, 

i, 100. 
Annales raedico-psychologiques, 

ii, 224. 
Antoine, i, 13. 
Archives de physiologie normale 

and pathologique, ii, 235. 
Aristotle, ii, 6. 

Bain, i. 67 ; ii, 26. 
Bastien, Charlton, i, 35. 
Beclard, ii, 285. 
Bell, Ch., i, 195. 
Bianchon, Dr. Horace, i, 84. 
Binet, i, 117. 

Biran, Maine de, i, 21 ; ii, 68. 
Boisinont, Brierre de, ii, 223. 
Bossuet, i. 81. 
Bouillier. F., i, 166. 
Bourneville, Dr., i, 50. 



Bremer, Mile. Frederika, ii, 169. 
Browne, J. Crichton, ii, 236. 
Bruyere, La, ii, 193. 
Buffon, ii, 93. 

Cabanis, i, 36. 

Calmiel, ii, 256. 

Campan, Mme., i, 210. 

Carpenter, i, 222. 

Chainpfleury, ii, 20. 

Charriere, Ladreyt de la, ii, 280. 

Combe, ii, 257. 

Comenius, ii, 187. 

Condillae, i, 273. 

Correspondenz Blatt, ii, 223. 

Cuignet, i, 104. 

D'Amraon, i, 31. 
Darwin, i, 19; ii, 18. 
Dauriac, i, 53. 
Delasiauve, ii, 234. 
Descartes, i, 277. 
Diesterweg, ii, 187. 
Doudan, i, 235. 
Droz, G., i, 46 ; ii, 28. 
Dupanlonp, ii, 191. 
Durand-Fardel, Dr. Max, ii, 249. 
xxvii 



XXVIU 



LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 



Egger, i, 19 ; ii, 2. 
Espinas, M. A., i, 49. 
Esquirol, i, 289. 

Fagiiet, Emile, i, 6. 

Fenelon, ii, 9. 

Ferri, L., i, 19 ; ii, 165. 

Filosofia delle scuole italiane, i, 

55. 
Fouillee, i, 270 ; ii, 270. 
Foville, ii, 254. 
Frariere, de, i, 33. 
Froebel, ii, 194. 

Gall, ii, 250. 

Gassieourt, Cadet de, ii, 132. 
Goethe, ii, 152. 
Goguillot, ii, 65, 
Goldsmith, ii, 203. 
Griesinger, ii, 241. 
Guimps, de, i, 29. 
Guislain, Dr., ii, 241. 
Gaizot, ii, 165, 
Giiyau, i, 190 ; ii, 57. 

Habberton, J,, ii, 205. 

Hale, Horatio, ii, 101. 

Hartley, i, 66, 

Haslam, ii, 224. 

Haussonville, Othenin d', ii, 183. 

Helvetius, ii, 177. 

Hement, P., ii, 173. 

Herbart, ii, 199. 

Herzen, ii, 270. 

Jaccoud, Dr., i, 51. 

Jager, von, i, 105. 

Janet, M, P,, i, 197, 

Jonrnal of Mental Science, ii, 

247. 



Kant, i, 89 ; ii, 137. 

Ladreyt de la Charriere, ii, 280. 
Legouve, ii, 113. 
Leibniz, i, 215, 
Lemoine, Albert, ii, 89. 
Letourneau, i, 39. 
Lewes, i, 72. 
Livingston, ii, 143. 
Locke, i, 181 ; ii, 27. 
Lorain, Dr., i, 56. 
Loti, Pierre, i, 211. 
Lucretius, i, 6. 
Luys, i, 38. 

Magnus, Hugo, i, 104. 
Maillet, M. E,, i, 135 ; ii, 40. 
Malebranche, i, 33, 
Manaceine, Mrae,, ii, 217. 
Marillier, i, 86, 
Marion, i, 65 ; ii, 10. 
Martin, Dr. H,, ii, 231. 
Maudsley, ii, 226, 
Michelet, ii, 142. 
Mind, ii, 107. 
Mislar, John, ii, 247. 
Montaigne, i, 43. 
Moreau, Dr. Paul, ii, 221. 
Morel, ii, 224, 
Miiller, Max, ii. 111. 

Nicolay, i, 228 ; ii, 7. 

Parot, i, 45, 

Paulmier, M. Le, ii, 240. 

Perez, i, 19 ; ii, 107, 

Perrier, Edmond, 1, 48. 

Philosophical Transactions of 

the Royal Society (London), 

i, 101. 



LIST OF AUTHORITIES QUOTED 



XXIX 



Pollock, i, 19 ; ii, 22. 
Preyer, i, 19 ; ii, 5. 
Prichard, ii, 246. 
Psyche Heilkunde, ii, 255. 

Quinet, Edgar, ii, 215. 

Rabier, i, 80. 

Ratisbonne, Louis, ii, 215. 

Ravaisson, i, 282. 

Reaumur, i, 226. 

Reid, i, 4. 

Remusat, Mme. de, ii, 181. 

Renaudin, ii, 255. 

Renouvier, ii, 155. 

Revue des Deux Mondes, July, 

1892, i, 5. 
Revue philosophique, i, 34; ii, 19. 
Revue scientifique, 1891, i, 180; 

ii, 2. 
Reynaud, Jean, i, 54. — 
Ribot, i, 33. 
Rigault, ii, 146. 
Rollet and Tomel, ii, 178. 
Romanes, i, 52 ; ii, 17. 
Rousseau, i, 181 ; ii, 54. 
Rust's Magazine, ii, 256. 



Saussure, Mme. Neeker de, i, 9 ; 

ii, 12. 
Shakespeare, i, 179. 
Sikorski, Dr. (in Revue phil.), 

i, 73 ; ii, 143. 
Sollier, D., i, 65 ; ii, 72. 
Sourian, i, 175. 
Spalding, i, 51. 
Spencer, Herbert, ii, 205. 
Stahl, i, 24. 

Stewart, Dugald, i, 120. 
Sully, i, 2 ; ii, 25. 

Taine, i, 19 ; ii, 42. 
Tennent, Sir J. E., i, 207. 
Thore, Dr., ii, 235. 
Tiedemann, i, 19. 
Tolstoi, Leon, ii, 191. 
Tomel and Rollet, ii, 178. 
Trousseau, ii, 229. 
Tylor, ii, 144. 

Villemain, i, 252. 
Vulpian, Vulpian, 78. 

Wundt, ii, 272. 



CONTEl^TS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. — The educative instincts : imitation and curiosity 1 

II. — Judgment and reasoning 29 

III. — Learning to speak 62 

IV. — The voluntary activity : walking and play . 118 

V. — Development of the moral sense .... 153 

VI. — Weak and strong points of character . . . 186 

VII. — Morbid tendencies 220 

VIII. — The sense of selfhood and personality . . 260 

Analytical index 289 

xxxi 



LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 



CHAPTER I* 

THE EDUCATIVE INSTINCTS : IMITATION AND 
CURIOSITY 

I. Imitation in the child. — It presupposes at least the perception 
of that which is imitated. — The imitative movements do not 
begin until towards the fourth month. — Different examples. — 
Does the imitation of sounds precede the imitation of visible 
movements? — Imitative movements are not all voluntary.— 
Unconscious and automatic imitation. — Yawning. — The con- 
tagion of cries and of tears. — Imitation and suggestion. — Con- 
scious but not voluntary imitation. — The child is amused by 
what he does. — The sense of humour. — Voluntary imitation. — 
Self-love, the desire to show his strength. — Sympathy, affec- 
tion. — Imitation of moral acts. — Inequalities of the power of 
imitation. II. Curiosity in animals. — Curiosity in the child. — 
Observations of Taine and of Champfleury. — Curiosity shown 
by looks, by movements of the hands. — The child must famil- 
iarize himself with objects before studying them. — Astonish- 
ment and curiosity. — Evolution of curiosity. — The child's 
questions. — His credulity. — Different causes for the question- 
ings of the child. — His curiosity often only mutability of mind. 
— Importance of curiosity in intellectual education. — Observa- 
tions of Dr. Sikorski. — The part of curiosity in the education 
of the will. 

The different faculties of the child, in their 
development, obey general tendencies, which are, 

* This is Chapter IX of the original work. 

1 



2 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

as it were, the inner energies of the nascent mind : 
imitation on the one hand, of which it has been 
said, not without exaggeration, however, that it 
makes possible the first awaking of intelligence ; * 
curiosity, on the other hand, which is the intel- 
lectual appetite, so to speak, the need for knowing, 
an understanding which, having been started, wishes 
to grow to maturity. We shall call them, in a word, 
the educative instincts, because they alone render 
education possible. Marion says that what is called 
the capacity of the child results in great measure 
from the gift of imitation, f It is indeed by virtue 
of his disposition to reproduce, first, the actions, 
later, the thoughts and feelings of others, that the 
child is humanized little by little, that he leaves 
his barbarism to enter upon civilization. The edu- 
cative influence of imitation extends to physical 
actions as well as to moral actions, to the intelli- 
gence as well as to the sensibility. The action of 
curiosity, apparently more limited, since it bears 
directly on instruction alone, is, however, of no less 
importance ; for it is curiosity that opens the door 
to ideas, and by enriching and stimulating the in- 
telligence, lays the foundation of the moral sense. 



To imitate is to reproduce what one has seen 
others do. Imitation, then, in its most elementary 
form, presupposes at least the perception of the act 
imitated. In order that the child should repeat, or 

* Egger, op. cit., p. 11. 

f Revue scientifique, 1891, p. 774. 



THE EDUCATIVE INSTINCTS 3 

try to repeat, the gestures and attitudes of those 
about him, it is evidently necessary that he should 
have noticed them, that he should at least have 
seen them. In the same way, to imitate a sound, 
he must have heard it. Therefore, an intellectual 
representation, more or less distinct, which will be 
either a perception, if he imitates immediately what 
he sees or hears, or a remembrance, if he imitates 
in a more conscious, more unrestrained way, at a 
distance — such is the condition of every imita- 
tive act. 

It follows from this that the motions of imita- 
tion, however precocious they may be, do not appear 
in the child as early as the automatic and the 
instinctive motions, which result from a sort of 
motor spontaneity.* Before entering, to a certain 
extent, into social life by means of his imitative 
acts, the new-born child simply repeats unconsciously 
and mechanically the motions suggested to him by 
the irresistible force of Nature and of heredity. 
For the first four months, nothing seems to reveal 
the instinct of imitation, and it is to the period 
extending from the fourth to the twelfth month 
that most of the facts gathered by observers re- 
late. 

At four months Tiedemann's son made a motion 
with his mouth, as though tasting something, when 
he saw any one drink. Darwin says that his little 
son was not more than four months old when he 
seemed to be trying to imitate sounds. But Darwin 
was afraid he had stated too much, and added that 

* See Chapter II. 



4 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

it was only at the age of six months that his son 
appeared nnmistakably to make this effort. 

If Darwin^s first observation were confirmed, it 
would tend to establish the imitation of sounds as 
preceding the imitation of visible motions. And 
it would seem natural that this should be so, for 
sound is more easily perceptible for hearing than 
is the representation of more or less complicated 
actions, of which any motion is composed, to the 
sight. But, on the other hand, the organ of speech 
is not yet sufficiently developed at the age of four 
or five months for vocal imitation to be easily 
produced. And we believe that Egger's obser- 
vation may be accepted as a general truth, when 
he says that he has never noticed any appreci- 
able effort to imitate sounds before the age of nine 
months. 

On the other hand, we do not believe that it 
is permissible to generalize Darwin^s affirmation 
when he claims that he has not observed a dispo- 
sition to imitate many kinds of action before the 
age of eleven months and a half ; this disposition 
shows itself earlier. Preyer saw traces of imi- 
tative motions from the fourth month, notably 
that of the protrusion of the lips — a motion which 
the child tried to reproduce as soon as he saw his 
father make it. At about the same time, when the 
father put the end of his tongue between his lips, 
the child tried to mimic him. Two months later, 
he smiled when people smiled at him. Finally, 
in the tenth month, he imitated certain motions of 
the hand and of the arm repeated frequently be- 
fore him ; for instance, waving his hand as " Good- 



THE EDUCATIVE INSTINCTS 5 

bye/' The child looked attentively at the person 
making the motions, then executed them himself, 
sometimes very rapidly, but, as Preyer acknowl- 
edged, without thinking of giving these purely im- 
itative motions the slightest expressive value.* 

Towards the age of nine months, Egger says, 
the child's instinct of imitation is clearly manifest : 
first, the action of hiding and of disclosing himself, 
in playing " peek-a-boo " ; second, the action of 
throwing a ball after having seen some one throw 
it ; third, trying to blow a candle out ; fourth, try- 
ing to mimic some one who has just sneezed ; fifth, 
trying to strike the keys of a piano, f 

Every one has seen many acts of the same kind 
towards the end of the first year and the beginning 
of the second year. A child seven months old, see- 
ing his father drum with his fingers on a table or a 
window-pane, will make an awkward scratching in 
imitation. A little boy twelve months old will im- 
itate the snapping of the fingers. A little girl from 
nine to twelve months old, cited by Preyer, imitated, 
in a most comical way, what she saw her nurse do ; 
she bathed her doll, corrected it, rocked it, and kissed 
it.l Another brushed and combed her hair, after 
having seen her mother do it. All the actions of 
every-day life are successively copied by the child 
with more or less awkwardness. This is how he 
learns to use his spoon, his fork ; how he pretends 
to read or to write, wetting the end of his pencil ; 

* The Senses and the Will, p. 284. 

f Egger, op. cit., p. 10. 

X The Senses and the Will, p. 286. 



6 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

to move his lips as though, muttering words under 
his breath. He is a little monkey, seeing every- 
thing and reproducing everything. 

But what is more important than enumerating 
facts, of which the list might be easily extended, is 
interpreting and understanding these facts. Is it 
necessary to recognise manifestations of will in the 
child's mimicries ? Preyer is very decided on this 
point. He says that although an imitative motion 
may have the appearance of an involuntary motion, 
when it is performed for the first time, it is never- 
theless true that it must have been performed in- 
tentionally, that is to say, voluntarily ; the imitat- 
ing child has a will. If Preyer is right, his theory 
would take us too far, and it would be necessary to 
put the monkey in the highest rank among beings 
endowed with will, since the monkey is the most 
imitative of animals. * 

Far from admitting that all the imitative motions 
of the child are voluntary, we believe that these 
motions in the beginning are not even conscious. 
Like all the faculties, imitation passes through dif- 
ferent stages in childhood. There is for it, also, a 
law of three epochs: first, it is automatic, almost 
reflex, instinctive, mechanically instinctive, at least ; 
then it becomes conscious of what it does : it is ex- 
ercised intelligently, without as yet being voluntary ; 

* Aristotle contents himself with noting the power of imitation 
without seeking to explain it. Th ixi^iela-Oai avfifpvTov ro7s auOpconois 
6K TraiSctiv eCTt, Koi rovTU) diacp^povai twv 6.W00V Qc^wv on fjufirfTiKwraroif 
iffTi Koi Tas fiaOrjixcis iroieirai 8ia fiifjirjaecas ras irpdoras (Poetics, chap. iv). 
Aristotle, then, did not know the monkeyj for he calls man the 
most imitative of all the animals. 



THE EDUCATIVE INSTINCTS 7 

finally, it becomes reflective, willed, intentional imi- 
tation. But how far the little child is from having 
attained this last stage of evolution ! We say noth- 
ing of the fact that even when it has become pos- 
sible, voluntary imitation will neither prevent nor 
suppress the play of instinctive imitation. 

An able, witty man, who has recently treated of 
our subject in an unpretentious way, calls attention 
to this point. "What could be more imperious," 
he says, " than the influence of those particular 
spasms called laughter and yawning ? Willy- 
nilly, we are conquered. We obey that impulsive 
force, which we would gladly repel, at any price. 
There is here an evident physical influence. If one 
person looks persistently at one corner of the room, 
or at the centrepiece of a ceiling, you will soon see 
those about him looking in the same direction, and 
finally all will have their eyes directed towards the 
same point. It is an innocent joke, amusing, after 
all, which the students repeat from time to time in 
the college lecture-room." * 

Impulsive imitation coexists with voluntary imi- 
tation in the adult, but it exists alone in the child. 
We need not say of the new-born child what Pascal 
says of man, that he is "automaton as much as 
mind " ; we may say unhesitatingly that he is simply 
automaton. There is a natural and fatal necessity 
that compels him to conform his actions to the 
actions of others, to model himself after the pattern 
of others ; and this without his reflecting; not only 
without his willing, but without his even knowing 

* Nicolay, Les Enfants mal eleves, Paris, 1890, p. 271. 



8 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

it. Otlierwise, how shall we explain the contagion 
of laughing and of crying, not infrequent with 
children, which heralds the contagion of fear and of 
cowardliness and those epidemics of hallucinations 
and visions among adults, of which we find so many 
examples in history ? Preyer himself cites facts 
that "it is impossible to reconcile with the theory 
he extols, that imitation is always voluntary. He 
says ; " When one enters a room in which there are 
several babies, all quiet, one can easily find out to 
what extent crying is contagious. If one child 
begins to cry, several others will very soon begin 
it too, then more, until finally the whole band will 
have joined in.'' 

Will you say that in cases of this sort there is a 
suggestion rather than an imitation ? This is ex- 
actly what we believe, that the imitative motions in 
the beginning are suggested, irresistibly suggested, 
by a sort of natural hypnotism. There is in ex- 
ample a force of action that is communicated and 
spread abroad, that attracts and fairly carries away 
mature man. How much more reasonable that it 
should act upon the child, whose personality is not 
yet organized! It is only later, when under the 
sway of reflection and of will, that example can 
become a freely chosen a^d intentionally imitated 
model. Then the impetus will come really from 
ourselves, from our intelligent spontaneity ; but at 
first it is from without, from external things, that 
the inclination to act emanates. 

It is true that this external instigation can have 
its effect only when it finds in the being that it pro- 
vokes to action a natural disposition to accept, to 



THE EDUCATIVE INSTINCTS 9 

snbmit to the influence of example. And it is this 
disposition that constitutes in its first form the 
instinct of imitation — passive instinct, to be sure — 
which is only a tendency to receive unresistingly 
the suggestions of others. In the little child phys- 
ical and moral weakness, the lack of personal initi- 
ative, and the absence of individuality are the par- 
ticularly favourable conditions that augment the 
force of example. Having as yet very little knowl- 
edge and a very small fund of ideas at his disposal, 
being powerless, moreover, to act by himself, the 
child yields easily to outside stimuli ; he is at the 
mercy of the impressions that besiege him on every 
side. As F^nelon said, " The ignorance of children, 
on whose brains nothing has been stamped as yet, 
and who have no habits, renders them pliant and 
inclined to imitate everything they see." * 

It is not necessary to bring up as an objection 
against the automatic character that we attribute 
to the first imitative motions the fact that they are 
generally clumsy and awkward, and do not present 
that precision, that immediate and infallible perfec- 
tion, which characterizes most of the instinctive 
motions : for instance, the motion of sucking, from 
the very first days of nursing. When a little child 
sees a person extend his lips and make a grimace, 
and then applies himself to imitating this motion, 
we find that he does it awkwardly, and not very 
successfully. On the other hand, the protrusion of 
the lips will be executed with remarkable perfection 
when it is produced spontaneously in the same 

* Fenelon, De rEducation des fllles, chap. iv. 



10 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

child, under the guidance of an effort of attention 
or of an inner impression of discontent. This little 
difficulty will be resolved when we consider that 
here it is not the motion itself that is instinctive, it 
is its cause. Instinct has drawn back, so to speak ; 
it is not joined to the same organs, to the muscles 
that determine the motions of the tongue and of 
the lips of the child when nursing. It is not cir- 
cumscribed in such or such special motion. It 
is a general and deep-seated tendency of Nature, 
a bent towards imitation, a blind inclination to 
yield to what is before one, to reproduce any mo- 
tions whatever ; not a special organic instinct, 
ruling with precision all the details of execu- 
tion in which heredity reigns as absolute mis- 
tress, because the motions depending upon it have 
been performed thousands of times by our ances- 
tors. 

One step further on, and imitation becomes con- 
scious and intelligent, without being, as yet, volun- 
tary. Marion says : " It is a fact that when an act 
is begun automatically and, as we say, mechan- 
ically, will tends to take its part, and completes it. 
One falls back with the cowards, or goes forward 
with the brave, at first by pure force of imitation, 
without the intervention of the will. But one 
necessarily sees oneself act, and becoming conscious 
of what he is in the way to do, must either consent 
to do it or decidedly refuse." * Marion speaks only, 
of the passage from the involuntary to the volun- 
tary ; but the evolution from the unconscious to 

* De la solidarite morale, p. 181. 



THE EDUCATIVE INSTINCTS H 

the conscious is accomplished in an analogous man- 
ner. It is because a child has repeated an imita- 
tive movement several times — for instance, that 
of blowing out a candle — that he comes, little by 
little, to take account of his own action, to com- 
pare what he tries to do, sometimes without suc- 
cess, with what he has seen his parents do. We 
see him, then, sometimes proud of and rejoicing 
in his work, sometimes ashamed of it ; proof evi- 
dent that his consciousness is involved, and that 
his intelligence participates in the action accom- 
plished. 

For the most part, the child will show pleasure 
in his efforts at imitation. Doubtless the pleasure 
felt in such a case results in part from the satisfac- 
tion that the child always finds in exercising his 
activity, in moving his muscles and his limbs. But 
joined to this there is something more particular, 
which proves that the child is conscious that he is 
making not merely any motion whatever, but an 
imitative motion. This will show itself above all 
in the voluntary motions that the child tries to 
accomplish a little later — for instance, when he 
puts a pencil in his mouth and pretends to smoke, 
when he imitates ridiculous attitudes, when he puts 
his father's broad-brimmed hat on himself. In this 
case the child shows a characteristic satisfaction 
which we should be tempted to hail as the first 
manifestation of the comic sense. He seems to 
seize the disproportion existing between his child 
character and the actions of the grown person that 
he is mimicking. In any case he is amused ; he is 
pleased by the singularity of his gestures and his 



12 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

poses; lie acts a comedy for himself at the same 
time that he is giving it for others.* 

When they have once become conscious, the 
imitative motions lose no time in passing into the 
hands of will ; when instinct disappears, individu- 
ality begins. By an initiative that belongs pe- 
culiarly to him, the child imitates certain actions 
which he has observed particularly. And these 
motions, up to a certain point, presuppose will in 
two ways : they presuppose it at first in the atten- 
tion accorded by the child to one action, in prefer- 
ence to all others; they presuppose it, too, in the 
little effort that he makes to reproduce this action, 
in the intention, more or less deliberate, that directs 
his motions, accomplished as they are from now on 
in the knowledge of the cause and in the prevision 
of the end to be attained. 

It is still more true in the case of the child than 
in that of man, that will does not exercise itself 
alone. Will, the absolute power of deciding for 
oneself unaided, if we make an abstraction of 
every desire, of every feeling, is but a metaphysical 
entity. Nevertheless, when the child wills to im- 
itate, he is guided by the different inclinations of 

* Compare Mrae. Necker de Saussure {pp. cit, II, chap. iv). 
" From sympathy comes a tendency to imitate. After having felt as 
we feel, the child wishes to act as we act. He believes that he can 
do what he sees us do, and his attempts, at once pleasing and 
awkward, are to us a source of great amusement. We make them 
an object of pleasantry, while with him they are the effect of a 
serious desire, which we soon succeed in perverting. Natural 
efforts at imitation become premeditated, almost affected, when 
they continue to amuse us." 



THE EDUCATIVE INSTINCTS 13 

his nature : self-love, the desire to show his strength, 
sympathy. 

In the first appearance of imitative actions, it is 
evident that the child reproduces by preference the 
simplest motions, those that require the least effort, 
those that correspond to the motions which, in the 
beginning, he accomplishes automatically or in- 
stinctively. But there comes a time when, on the 
contrary, the child delights in the most inconve- 
nient imitations, when he selects difficulty, when, by 
a sort of vanity and childish vainglory to show his 
strength, he chooses as models those who are stronger 
and older than himself. He loves to increase his 
stature, so to speak, and to play that he is a young 
man. He has all the ambitions, and pretends to do 
everything that is done before him. Marcel is two 
years and two months old ; whenever any one says 
before him, " I am going out," or " I am going horse- 
back riding," the child replies immediately, " I am 
going too." There is here a visible beginning of 
emulation — the emulation that wishes to equal, if 
not that which aspires to surpass. 

Let us not forget, on the other hand, that even 
in voluntary imitation the force of suggestion and 
of instinctive imitation always plays a part. If the 
child imitates those who are skilful, more experi- 
enced than he, it is not only because he has the 
secret ambition to raise himself beyond his present 
state, to anticipate the future, nor because he wishes 
to do more and to do it better than he normally and 
naturally can ; it is also because he is captivated^ 
charmed, fascinated, by the example of those who 
have more strength, more authority than he has 
4 



14 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

and wliose actions stand out in bolder relief. I 
liave known families in which there were two 
brothers, the older having the weaker, more effemi- 
nate character, while the younger had, on the con- 
trary, a very strong, energetic nature; it was al- 
ways the older that conformed more readily to his 
brother's actions, whether in their plays or in con- 
duct in general. 

We are careful not to omit in giving the aux- 
iliaries of imitation, sympathy in its two senses, 
either as the faculty that makes us participate in 
the troubles and sufferings of others, or as the in- 
clination that draws two people together and in- 
spires them with a mutual affection. Under the 
first form, sympathy is really nothing but imitation, 
a moral imitation, since it is but the secret need of 
putting our feelings and our thoughts in accord 
with the thoughts and the feelings of others. The 
child that cries when he sees others cry, becomes 
sad when his mother is sad, is really only imitating. 
In the same way, sympathy, considered as a natural 
and instinctive affection, is a principle of imitation. 
It is the comrades whom he likes, the brothers and 
sisters whom he loves, that the child will imitate 
most of all. To love any one, is this not in part a 
wish to resemble the object of our love ? 

Imitation, which at first bore only on material 
things, which reproduced simply a few elementary 
movements, such as putting out the hand in saluta- 
tion, later more complicated motions, as throwing 
the arm around a person's neck in an embrace, rises, 
little by little, to moral things, and becomes the 
essential means of education. This will be so, above 



THE EDUCATIVE INSTINCTS 15 

all, when it can found itself on esteem or on admi- 
ration. But we must not as yet expect of the child 
this ideal imitation, such as moralists describe or 
artists practise. It is motives of another order that 
inspire the imitation of moral virtues or of aesthetic 
beauties in the first years ; it is, as we have seen, the 
tendency to sympathize with others, to act as they 
do, or the pretension of doing as well as they do ; 
it is sometimes, also, the desire to distinguish one- 
self. The proof of this is that the child shows him- 
self equally disposed to reproduce the good and the 
bad, the beautiful and the ugly ; neither taste nor 
conscience has as yet appeared. 

There can be no doubt, moreover, but that the 
power of imitation, as that of all the faculties which 
are not purely instinctive, varies with the tempera- 
ment, with the nature of each child. It is easy to 
see some of the causes of this inequality. The first 
is the strength or weakness of the organs ; accord- 
ing as the child is vigorous or puny, he will have 
a greater or less tendency to imitate the motions, 
the actions that he sees about him, so that even in 
the most instinctive imitations, the energy belong- 
ing to each individual shows itself. The lazy child 
will be lazy in imitating others, as well as in acting 
by himself. Another cause is the degree of activity 
of the intelligence ; a gifted child, whose attention 
is awakened very early, will surpass his comrades 
in his imitative zeal, either because he has noticed 
more, or because he has taken account of the mo- 
tions and operations necessary to repeating the 
action. In this case, imitation evidences, above all, 
the force of the intellectual temperament. Later, 



16 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

it is true, things will change, and those children 
that remain imitators will be the ones that have 
the weakest personality, the least individuality, and 
consequently find it more convenient, in their indo- 
lence, to continue to imitate others instead of acting 
and thinking for themselves. Excellent as it is in 
the first years, since it teaches the child all that he 
needs to know and to do in order to be in touch 
with his fellow creatures, to enter into the current 
of humanity, imitation becomes later a dangerous 
evil, as a school of servile docility in which origi- 
nality has no chance to blossom out. 

But although it may be wise to distrust the 
effects of an habitual imitation, in so far as it con- 
cerns the education of the personality, it is impos- 
sible to ignore the fact that the advantage of its 
action is, in little children, in proportion to its 
strength. Who does not know that the child who 
has brothers and sisters is easier to teach than the 
one who has none ? If alone, he does not think of 
trying to use his legs, or, from another point of 
view, of exercising his judgment or his imagination 
as soon as if other children are with him. The 
reason that school education has always been in 
repute is not only that it is a social necessity, but 
that example is necessary to stimulate the activity. 
The more extended the field opened out before the 
child's observation, and consequently before his 
imitation, the more quickly his intelligence will 
develop. Let us admit that instinctive and uncon- 
scious imitation indicates a lower degree of mental 
development. Darwin tells us the tendency to imi- 
tate is especially strong in savages. Note also that 



THE EDUCATIVE INSTINCTS 17 

in certain morbid states of the brain this disposition 
is exaggerated in a singular way. Hemiplegics and 
other unfortunates afflicted with softening of the 
brain imitate every word they hear, every action 
and gesture they see, without having any conscious- 
ness of it. If, however, nnder this first form, imi- 
tation is the characteristic of an inferior state or of 
an exhaustion of moral evolution, the case is a very 
different one when we come to intelligent and more 
or less voluntary imitation. Let ns remember what 
Romanes says in his book on the mental evolution 
of animals : " As the faculty of imitation depends 
on observation, it is found in greatest force among 
the higher or more intelligent animals.^' * 

II 

The question whether curiosity belongs exclu- 
sively to the child, or whether it shows itself in 
animals also, is an interesting one. The most re- 
cent observers of animals — Romanes, for instance — 
do not hesitate to declare themselves on the affirma- 
tive side. But it is difficult to take Romanes^ state- 
ments as serious when he declares that it is by a curi- 
ous desire to examine a new, striking object that cer- 
tain birds are attracted towards a light — for exam- 
ple, towards a lighthouse — or that certain insects fly 
towards a lighted torch and burn themselves. f The 
fascination of light, the charm of a brilliant object, 
will suffice to explain these instinctive actions of ani- 
mals. It is not impossible, however, to discover in 

* Romanes, Mental Evolution of Animals, 225. 
f Op. ciL, p. 279. 



18 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

tlie dog, for instance, and in tlie monkey, too, traces 
of real curiosity. We have seen dogs six months 
old leap upon a chair to look out of a window to 
see what was going on in the garden. In the same 
way, Darwin found that the apes of a menagerie, 
in spite of the instinctive terror that serpents in- 
spired in them, could not resist the desire to satisfy 
their curiosity, from time to time, by raising the 
covers of the boxes near them in which the reptiles 
were confined.* 

If the intelligence of animals, the limited intel- 
ligence, doomed to be held prisoner by instinct, is 
capable of curiosity, how much more reason that 
the child's intelligence, destined by nature to a 
long evolution, and having everything to learn, 
should show itself curious from its first awakening ! 
Curiosity is the mind in quest of knowledge, which, 
starting from nothing, claims everything. Curi- 
osity is, then, the characteristic of human intelli- 
gence, which is, in great part, the work of experience 
and of labour. It will show itself from the first 
months, with the first glance brought to bear on 
things, with the first movement of the hands to 
seize and feel a thing. It will accompany the exer- 
cise of all the senses. In its first manifestations, 
moreover, it will not be, as yet, the need for know- 
ing and understanding; to know and to under- 
stand do not belong to this first period. It will 
be simply an avidity for new sensations, a perpet- 
ual quest for different perceptions, a sort of in- 
tellectual motor activity, the child's mind not being 

* Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 72. 



THE EDUCATIVE INSTINCTS 19 

able, as yet, any more than his body, to remain in 
place. 

That is to say, we should not see in the curiosity 
of the first months a sort of scientific instinct, an 
imperative and exclusive need for experimental 
observations, as Taine and Champfleury appear to 
have done in two passages, otherwise charming, in 
their studies on childhood. "Every one may re- 
mark," says Taine, " that beginning with the fifth 
or sixth month, for two years or more, children 
employ all their time in making experiments in 
physics. No animal, not even the cat or the dog, 
makes this continuous study of all the objects that 
are within his reach. All day long the child I speak 
of (twelve months old) feels, turns, drops, tastes, 
experiments upon everything that falls into her 
hands ; whether the object is a ball, a doll, a rattle, 
a plaything, as soon as it is known she leaves it ; it 
is no longer new, she has nothing more to learn, it 
no longer interests her. Pure curiosity, physical 
need, appetite, have nothing to do with it." * No, 
assuredly the physical appetites are not the only 
cause of these motions and of this activity of the 
child, of these sudden likes, followed by as sudden 
dislikes, in which the special needs of the intelli- 
gence are already showing themselves. But it 
would not be less inexact to take them as signs of 
some precocious tendency to pure speculation, and 
to consider children as professional experimenters, 
when they simply desire to move, and are ever 
anxious for change ; after a few minutes of repose 

* Revue philosophique, 1876, vol. i, p. 7. 



20 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

or of diversion, they take their best-known play- 
things again with as much pleasure as at first. 

In a charming chapter of his book, Les Enfants, 
Champfleury has not guarded against this exagger- 
ation, either, when he shows how spontaneous and 
keen is the child^s need for observation. "It is 
not by pure caprice," he says, " that the child con- 
stantly extends his hands towards objects out of 
his reach, and cries when he is refused them. At 
the age when he has need of laying a foundation 
for his knowledge, his eyes do not suffice to enable 
him to appreciate the angles or the contours of these 
objects ; the child wants to feel them. . . . Break- 
ing his playthings depends upon the same system 
of observation. The child is anxious to know by 
what mysterious power the doll closes its eyes, how 
the toy sheep bleats, by what means the horse rolls 
over: this is why he has broken his playthings 
from the beginning of humanity, enriching, doubt, 
less, our glass cases of little clay dolls, without arms 
or legs, in antique museums."* Here, too, while 
admitting that curiosity has its part, we must give 
due place to the instinct of motion, which some- 
times translates itself into a need for destruction. 

Childish curiosity, moreover, does not exercise 
itself immediately with the freedom, the boldness 
that will characterize it later. Before the child 
comes to the point of desiring to know things, he 
begins by being afraid of them and turning away 
from them. Everything new frightens him, and 
he shows that at first he is divided between a desire 

* Champfleury, Les Enfants, 1871, p. 236. 



THE EDUCATIVE INSTINCTS 21 

to understand objects and a secret feeling of fear. 
We can see in Mm several traces of what modern 
writers call "neophobia/' of "misoneism," which 
the Italian anthropologist, Lombroso, arbitrarily 
presents to us as the absolute law of the human 
race, always quick to be frightened at new things, 
but which is in reality only a passing moment, an 
accident, whether in the life of humanity or in the 
life of childhood. In the new-born child, indeed, 
the tendency to inactivity does not long dominate 
the natural need for action. As soon as the child 
has become familiar with things, and the first mo- 
ment of surprise is over, he studies them with a 
naive curiosity that does not stop short of indiscre- 
tion. And the more frightened he is at first, the 
more inclined will he be afterward to observe on 
all sides the object that has struck his imagination 
so forcibly. 

Astonishment is, in a way, the starting-point of 
curiosity. Even in the adult, everything surprising 
or unusual excites a desire to understand and to 
account for it. The child, then, to whom every- 
thing is new, will be curious about everything. At 
the very beginning, however, his curiosity will be 
brought to bear upon the people or the objects that 
relate to his first needs, his first emotions, especially 
on all that concerns nourishment. Doubtless it will 
follow the intellectual perceptions in their develop- 
ment, as they extend the horizon of the mind little 
by little, but it will obey, above all, the progress of 
the sensibility. It will fasten itself upon all that 
the child likes, by interest and egoism at first, by 
sympathy later. Perhaps the first evident manif es- 



22 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

tation of childish curiosity is produced when the 
child passes his hand over the different parts of his 
body and takes account of his own little person. 
Afterward it will be the toys, the different utensils 
of the domestic life, and animals that will particu- 
larly attract the curiosity of his eyes and of his 
hands. 

Confined at first to the simple observation of the 
nature of familiar things, analogous to the work 
of examination performed by a new tenant in the 
house he has taken, curiosity very soon passes the 
limits of personal interest. The child of two or 
three years looks at everything, listens to every- 
thing; his investigating eyes ferret out all the 
corners. Moreover, as soon as he understands the 
meaning of words, nothing in the conversations he 
hears escapes him. When he can talk, he takes 
part in everything ; he becomes inquisitive and 
wants to know everything. Nor is it only by his 
perpetual questions that he will show this curiosity, 
ever on the alert.* One of the results of scientific 
curiosity in the grown man is to be found in col- 
lections ; the child makes them, too, in his own way. 
Beg a child of three or four years of age to empty 
his pockets before you ; nothing could be more 
amusing than the display of this jumble, where he 
has packed away, pell-mell, all sorts of objects ; 
partly, no doubt, because he wanted to appropriate 
them, and have them at his disposal, but partly, 

* It is a question to be decided as to when the child becomes 
capable of asking questions. Preyer says in the twenty-eighth 
month. Pollock finds the first question in the twenty-third 
month. 



THE EDUCATIVE INSTINCTS 23 

also, from curiosity, to study them at his leisure, by 
the same sort of mania that we see in collectors of 
curios. * 

To understand things is not only to know their 
qualities, but also to understand their origin and 
their purpose. Under this second form, also, curi- 
osity appears in the little child ; for instance, when 
he turns his head to see where a noise comes from, 
when his eyes follow a bell-cord that has been put 
into his hands until he sees where it is fastened to 
the ceiling. Curiosity will not show itself in all 
its force, however, until the child can talk and 
multiply at will his "hows " and his eternal " whys.^' 

The child would become really tiresome, a veri- 
table bore, by his incessant questions, if his cre- 
dulity did not equal his curiosity, if he were not 
as much disposed to accept the first explanation 
that comes as he is to ask for an answer. The nas- 
cent intelligence is contented with little. Every- 
thing is a problem— material for question ; but any- 
thing will pass for a solution. Notice, in the first 
place, that many of the child's demands are simply 
to know the names of things. " What is that ? "' 
often means " What is the name of that ? " And 

* " The pocket, that is to say, a region dear to him (the child) 
in which he collects his treasures : pieces of wood, peach-pits, ends 
of pencils, nails, buttons, no matter what. It is here that his life, 
moral and physical, leaves a palpable trace of his thoughts and 
his acts. All these little nothings have been a cause of joy and 
of interest. Each one of them has taken an instant of his life," 
and represents a dream." (G. Droz, L'Enfant, p. 217.) We ought 
to add that the pocket is the image of the fickleness of the child's 
tastes. 



24: LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

"wlien once the name of the object is known, the 
child stops, happy in his little knowledge, having 
added a new word to his poor little vocabulary. 
When, a little older, he really asks for an explana- 
tion, and, being directed already by the great laws 
of causality and of final purposes, his little reason 
wants to know what an object is used for, or how an 
event has happened, it is necessary often but to give 
him one word for another and he will declare himself 
satisfied. The most commonplace because will satis- 
fy his most imperious why ; the most futile reasons 
seem solid to him. Just as a ravenous appetite is 
not disturbed by the quality of the dishes served to 
it, so the child^s curiosity, in its credulous avidity, 
is satisfied with all the proofs and all the explana- 
tions offered it. And it is just because it is so easy 
to abuse the naivete of childish intelligence, to 
lead them astray by careless answers, to throw 
them consequently into all sorts of prejudices and 
superstitions, that parents ought to be very careful 
in their choice of explanations furnished their 
children. It is committing a crime of high treason 
against innocence to amuse oneself by deceiving a 
child. When it is impossible to respond seriously 
to his ill-timed and inopportune questions, it is 
better to answer simply, " I do not know," or " You 
cannot understand that at your age," than to play 
upon his good faith by telling him what is false, 
or by talking idly and foolishly to him.* 

* It is interesting to notice that the facility with which a child 
asks questions and receives answers to them has much to do with 
the development of his curiosity. It has been found that in deaf- 
mutes curiosity does not develop in the same degree as in the nor- 



THE EDUCATIVE INSTINCTS 25 

If the child's curiosity does not seem to be scru- 
pulous in the matter of accepting explanations, it 
is not only because he is ignorant, and consequently 
credulous, it is also because his wavering, change- 
able thought cannot fix itself as yet. "The child 
never insists upon objects ; he leaves them as easily 
as he takes them ; he has forgotten his own ques- 
tion before you have finished answering him." * I 
have got out of the embarrassment more than once, 
when my children have asked a difficult question 
that I could not answer, by turning their imagi- 
nation towards other subjects. Sully makes the 
same remark : " The feeling of ignorance is not yet 
completely developed in the child ; the desire to 
know is not sustained, is not fixed on each particu- 
lar object by a sufficiently definite interest ; so that 
parents will often find that the thought of the little 
questioner is already far from his subject, and that 
his imagination is marching along to something 
else, even before the answer has been given him." f 
In this case it is apparent that there is fickleness in 
the mind rather than real curiosity, if we under- 
stand by curiosity the scientific instinct that does 
not rest until it finds the explanation sought. 

In the inexhaustible prattling of the questioning 
child mere chattering plays a large part. The child 
questions simply for the sake of talking, of showing 
his little powers of oratory, just as the birds sing 

mal child, simply because the deaf-mute cannot ask questions. 
There is a correlation between the inner tendency and the possi- 
bility of the outward expression of this tendency. 

* Dictionnaire de pedagogic, article Curiosite. 

f Handbook of Psychology, p. 401. 



26 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

and chirp. There is, finally, as Bain has observed, 
" spurious curiosity." He says : " Frequently it is 
a mere display of egotism, the delight in giving 
trouble, in being pandered to and served."* The 
child^s demands result sometimes, it is true, from 
the need of not letting himself be forgotten, in 
order to make a place for himself among those 
about him ; sometimes, too, from a sort of petulance 
and teasing humor, in which the disinterested desire 
to know does not play any part. The desire or the 
need to know is, nevertheless, the essential principle 
of childish curiosity, whether it shows itself in per- 
sonal investigations or whether it expresses itself in 
questions. The child has more or less of the feeling 
of his own ignorance ; in any case he is ignorant, 
and he naturally aspires to filling up, day by day, 
the gaps in his knowledge. In the society of men, 
the questioner, who is often so intolerable, is doubt- 
less above all a curious person, but he is also an 
ignorant person, who hardly ever thinks for him- 
self, and who is obliged to resort to the reflections 
and knowledge of others. The child, in the desti- 
tution in which he finds himself, draws in the same 
way upon the knowledge of his parents and of his 
teachers. 

Curiosity, then, is the great instrument of intel- 
lectual education. It renders possible both the 
transmission of knowledge and the heredity of 
knowledge ; it suggests to the child, also, personal 
research and observations. All is not frivolous and 
without value in the curious preoccupations of very 

* Bain, Education as a Science, p. 90. 



THE EDUCATIVE INSTINCTS 27 

little children. Because the mind is not yet con- 
fined by the habits of routine that school education 
will suggest to them, their unforeseen questions are 
sometimes of such a nature as to tax the thoughts 
of reflective men. "I think," says Locke, "there 
is frequently more to be learned from the unex- 
pected questions of the child than from the dis- 
courses of men, who talk in a road, according to 
the notions they have borrowed and the prejudices 
of their education." * 

But it is not only from the point of view of the 
instruction and cultivation of the mind that curi- 
osity plays a large part ; a psychologist physician. 
Dr. Sikorski, thinks, and with reason, that it is an 
important element also in the education of the will. 
The moment that the child is divided, so to speak, 
between the preoccupation of hunger and the need 
of observing, of knowing, that moment, he says, has 
a high pedagogical significance. There is, as it 
were, a struggle that begins then between the two 
parts of our nature, and little by little the intel- 
lectual instinct drives back and retards the manifes- 
tation of the physical appetite. " When a child has 
been very much occupied and has been furnished 
with a great many impressions that have engrossed 
his attention, hunger will be longer in showing 
itself than it ordinarily is; it is true that in re- 
venge it breaks out suddenly, violently, accom- 
panied by crying." f 

Dr. Sikorski feels authorized by this observation 

* Locke on Education, Cambridge, 1892, p. 108. 
f Revue philosophique, 1885, vol. xix, p. 54. 



28 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

to recommend " systematic exercises," tlie practical 
devices that he has employed himself, in order to 
teach his children to overcome their impatience 
to eat. " Every morning," he says, " the milk was 
heated on a spirit-lamp, in the child's presence, and 
this for pedagogical reasons. The operation of the 
boiling of the milk and of its cooling, which takes 
from fifteen to twenty minutes, offered the child an 
instructive amusement, and accustomed him to re- 
press the sensation of hunger. Children to whom 
the milk is brought all prepared do not know how 
this preparation is made, and demand imperiously 
that their breakfast shall be served as soon as they 
awake." It seems to us that in this case Dr. Sikor- 
ski carries too far his constraint and forced atten- 
tion. I do not know whether all children possess, 
as his do, this particular gift of patience, which 
would allow them to bear without irritation the 
waiting imposed upon them. But the observations 
of the Russian psychologist are none the less inter- 
esting, and they prove that one can, to a certain 
extent, sustain the attention by exciting curiosity, 
and in that way train the child to govern his de- 
sires ; that is to say, to exercise his will-power. 



CHAPTER II 

JUDGMENT AND REASONING 

I. Judgment in the child before the acquisition of language. — 
Judgments that are only associations, either of like remem- 
brances or of different remembrances. — Judgments that pre- 
suppose a comparison between two states. It is the sensibility ; 
it is, above all, a need that calls out the practical judgments 
of the child expressed by his actions. — Every clear perception is 
a judgment. — The child's attitude in acquiring the association of 
ideas, whether spontaneously or by suggestion. — The first mani- 
festations of reasoning. Employment of means to an end. — 
Seeking for causality. II. Judgment during and after the ac- 
quisition of language. — Very clear judgments expressed by in- 
complete propositions. — Verbal insufficiency corresponding to 
a faulty analysis. — Judgments of being. — Judgments of rela- 
tion. — The first judgments are individual. — Negative judg- 
ments. III. Transition from judgment to reasoning. — Infer- 
ence of one fact from another. — Different stages of induction. — 
Reasonings by analogy. — The child in reasoning does not go 
so far as to deduce general or universal propositions. — The 
notion of causality. — The part of education in developing the 
notion of cause. — The why of the child. — The notion of finality. 
— The beginnings of reason. — Space and time. IV. The weak- 
nesses of the child's intelligence. — His apparent ingenuousness 
often only clumsiness of expression. Causes of intellectual 
weakness in the child : ignorance, confusion of ideas, trifling 
associations. — Mutability of impressions. — Hasty judgment. 

I 

There are two very distinct periods in the de- 
velopment of judgment and of reasoning : tlie first 
5 29 



30 LATEK INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

before the cMld can talk, the second beginning with 
the moment that be understands the meaning of 
words and begins to know bow to use tbem. But 
in the one and in the otber tbe nascent powers of 
judgment and of reasoning bave tbis common char- 
acteristic ; they are not yet faculties of reflection ; 
they proceed from a sort of natural spontaneity. The 
judgment and tbe reasoning of the child are almost 
always lacking in reflection. We feel that there is 
no effort there, and tbis fact is at once tbe weakness 
and the charm of these first attempts at thinking. 
Doubtless, it is through language that intelligence 
frees itself, that thought can analyze itself. Tbe 
use of speech, however, is not necessary in order 
that judgment and reasoning should begin to be 
active. And if, in the adult, thought is only an 
inner speech, words having become through habit 
the instruments of intellectual work, it is certain 
that in tbe child thought precedes and alone makes 
possible tbe acquisition of language. 

Most of the actions, tbe movements, and the ges- 
tures of every little child show that he has formed 
judgments in bis way. He smiles at his mother, he 
recognises her ; this implies the essential elements 
of judgment : tbe image of a person, tbe remem- 
brance of having seen her before — that is to say, 
the beginnings of ideas — moreover, tbe affirmation 
that this person is present, that tbe child knows her 
and does not confound her with any other person. 
When tbe nurse starts to walk with him tbe child 
makes tbe gesture of taking hold of the door ; he 
judges that it is through that door that he is to go 
out. When frightened before a stranger, be presses 



JUDGMENT AND REASONING 31 

himself against the breast of his nurse ; he must 
then be conscious of the fact that a person whom he 
does not know has presented himself to him for the 
first time. He refuses one kind of food, he clamors 
for another — proof that he distinguishes between 
them. He turns away from the fire because he 
knows that fire burns ; because, at least, he remem- 
bers that the fire has burned him once. Thus a 
throng of judgments, like flashing lights, pass 
through the brain of the child. He notices the 
disappearance of his nurse or of his parents ; he 
calls for them with loud cries, he greets their 
return with transports of joy. He recognises the 
fact very clearly if one of his playthings is gone. 
Preyer tells of a child, six months old, from whom 
they could not take one of his ninepins without his 
noticing it ; the same child, when eighteen months 
old, could tell very accurately whether or not he 
had his full number in a game of ten animals. 

In the examples that we have just enumerated 
there appear several distinct steps in the progress 
of intelligence. In the first case there is only an 
association of remembrances absolutely alike. The 
child has noticed his mother's face, or his father's 
face, those faces which, as far as white spots and 
pink spots and two bright eyes are concerned, as 
Helmholtz says, make up a whole easy to remem- 
ber. He sees them every day. Like images suc- 
ceed each other, and one calls up the other. There 
is here only an association of visual images, which 
memory has held and which are grouped to form 
notions wholly sensible. In other cases there is 
still an association of remembrances, but of easily 



32 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

distinguished remembrances. The child, in seeing 
again a known image — the door of the room, the 
flame of the candle — remembers the consecutive 
events which in preceding experiences accompanied 
the appearance of these visual impressions — the 
walk, the burn. And he expects the repetition of 
these events by a sort of spontaneous induction.* 
Finally, in the last examples cited there is some- 
thing more : there is, in the absence of the person, 
of the object, the feeling that this person or this 
object is lacking ; there is the recognition of their 
absence, called forth by the child's need of their 
presence, a veritable comparison between the two 
states, the one past, the other present, with the 
strong desire that the past state should recur. 

In these associations of remembrances, which 
are the foundations of the child's judgments, and 
which may take on so many different forms, it is 
the needs, the inclinations, that most often call forth 
the intellectual phenomena. The child becomes in- 
telligent little by little only because he is already 
a sensible being, because he has appetite, affections, 
little passions. When we are grown up we can, up 
to a certain point, act by thought alone ; but this 
abstract work of pure intelligence does not belong 
to the child. In his case sensibility almost al- 
ways excites intelligence. Each one of his remem- 
brances is, so to speak, under the control of a 

* Romanes, in Mental Evolution of Animals, defines this kind 
of judgment exactly in saying that there is here such an associa- 
tion of ideas that the presence of a perception leads to an infer- 
ence of the complement of this perception, or to the inductive 
anticipation of a future event. 



JUDGMENT AND REASONING 33 

need, of a sympathy, of an affection. So the need 
of nourishment and the taste for dainties being 
what they are in the case of the child, we ought 
not to be astonished to find that his intelligence 
develops first in the acts associated with taking his 
food. Preyer gives several curious examples of 
this. A child ten months old, having found that 
after nursing a long time he could get only a few 
drops of milk, placed his hand on the breast of his 
nurse and pressed it vigorously,* probably a recol- 
lection with a practical application of a chance 
experience which had shown him a relation be- 
tween the compression of the breast and the more 
or less abundant flowing of the milk. Ten months 
later the same child, seeing on the table a box, from 
which on the day before some one had taken a cake 
to give to him, made the motion of asking for an- 
other cake. And another day, when he was twenty- 
one months old, having eaten a biscuit that his 
father had taken from the pocket of a coat hanging 
in the closet, he went directly to the closet to find a 
second biscuit in the pocket of the coat. 

If the child's intelligence does not show its nas- 
cent activity very often during the first months, it 
is because a solicitous education, by the minute 
care with which it surrounds him, dispenses with all 
effort, with all quest ; it is because his wishes are 
foreseen, often even satisfied, before they have had 
time to appear. In spite of his extreme physical 
weakness, if he were more often left to himself, 
if his very weakness did not impose on parents 

* Development of the Intellect, p. 10. 



34 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

the obligation to spare him every effort, the child. 
Tinder the discipline of necessity, would much ear- 
lier show himself to be intelligent, inventive, and 
industrious. 

Moreover, it is of course true that, beyond the 
judgments of which we have given examples, and 
which presuppose more or less a comparison, con- 
scious or unconscious, of several remembrances, of 
several successive perceptions, the child performs 
an act of judgment, shown by the very fact that 
he perceives, that he uses his senses. Every clear 
perception is a judgment. As soon as the conscious- 
ness distinguishes an object, it judges, it discerns, 
it " discriminates," according to the expression of 
English psychologists ; it says that this object is 
what it is, that it is not another; it applies the 
logical principle of identity. " The first ray of light 
that enters the child's eye, and the first drop of milk 
that falls on his tongue," says Rivarol, " give rise 
to the first judgment, since he knows that the one 
is not the other." 

When we treat of the intelligence of children 
before they can talk, we have to resort to a com- 
parison with what occurs in animals. The animal, 
in effect, remains all its life what the child is for a 
few months : a relatively intelligent being that does 
not talk. It is easy to find a young dog making 
judgments, practical inductions that bear a certain 
analogy to the intelligent acts of the child. The 
dog quickly learns to scratch at the door to have it 
opened for him, or to conclude that breakfast is 
about to be served because he has heard the bell 
that always announces that fact. There are, how- 



JUDGMENT^ AND REASONING 35 

ever, sensible differences at the very outset between 
the intellectual state of the child, who is to become 
a man, and that of the animal, which will be for- 
ever imprisoned in the circle of the same actions, 
in the narrow limits of an intelligence more in- 
stinctive than reasoning. According to Darwin, 
the difference will consist, above all, in the greater 
receptivity of the child. He says that the aptitude 
for acquiring associations due to instruction and 
those that are produced spontaneously seems to him 
to be the most marked difference between the mind 
of the little child and that of even the most intelli- 
gent grown dog. He tells the story of the pike that 
threw itself with such force that it was stunned 
against a wall of glass that separated it from some 
gudgeons; during three whole months the pike 
continued to make the same attempt, with the 
same lack of success. The greater aptitude in 
forming an association of ideas, whether sponta- 
neously or by suggestion, is indeed one of the rea- 
sons that explain the progress of the human 
intelligence. The child lends himself quickly to 
instruction, whether by the results of his own ex- 
perience or by the lessons that are given him, and 
that even before reflection comes in. We might 
say that the education of judgment is only the 
direct consequence of a great many observations, 
gathered and preserved by memory. 

In sonae of the simplest judgments that we have 
cited a]30ve there already appeared a certain in- 
ductive force, an inference from a present percep- 
tion to that which usually follows it, the inference 
from a premise to a conclusion resulting from it. 



36 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

But even before the child begins to speak, we can 
find traces of more complicated reasoning. Here 
are some examples. Darwin says : " When my son 
took my finger and tried to put it into his month, 
his hand prevented him from grasping it and suck- 
ing it. But on the hundred and fourteenth day, 
after having accomplished this motion, he slid his 
own hand over in such a way as to be able this time 
to put the end of my finger into his mouth. This 
manoeuvre was repeated several times. Evidently 
it was not the result of chance, it was an act of 
reason.^^ Here the reasoning shows itself in a 
studied combination of movements, in the adapta- 
tion of the means employed to the end accomplished. 
The child understood what caused the hindrance, 
and he succeeded in removing it. The same child, 
at five months,* as soon as his hat and cloak were 
put on, became disturbed and fretful if he was not 
taken out immediately. An association was formed 
between the idea of his clothing and the idea of the 
walk ; and by a real induction the child concluded 
that the hour for going out was at hand, since they 
had put on his clothes for the occasion. " When, 
on the eighty-first day, I rubbed with my wet finger 
a tall drinking-glass, and produced high tones new 
to the infant, he immediately turned his head, but 
did not hit the direction with his gaze, sought for 
it, and when it was found, held it f ast."" \ In this 

* " It is in the second quarter of the first year," says Dr. Si- 
korski, " that the first germs of consciousness and of the pro- 
cess called reasoning appear." (Revue philosophique, 1885, p. 
406.) 

t The Senses and the Will, p. 47. 



JUDGMENT AND REASONING 37 

example, the cliild^s reasoning is a real search, for 
causal activity. 

The following observations are of the same 
kind : " In the twelfth month the child was accus- 
tomed, almost every morning, to observe the noisy 
putting of coals into the stove A. On the three 
hundred and sixty-third day it took place in the 
next room, in the stove B. The child at once looked 
in the direction of the sound, but as he discovered 
nothing, he turned his head around nearly one hun- 
dred and eighty degrees, and regarded the stove A 
with an inquiring gaze : that stove had already been 
filled/' * In this case, also, to an association of ideas 
between an auditory impression — the noise that the 
coal makes in falling — and a visual impression — 
the stove being filled — is joined a more or less vague 
notion of causality. It is by virtue of the same 
principles that Doddy, when he was six months 
old, and was looking smilingly at the image of his 
father reflected in a mirror, turned suddenly to look 
at his father if the latter made a face. 

We might multiply analogous examples. At 
six months. Marcel watches attentively the shadows 
cast on a white wall by movem^ents of the fingers. 
He follows them with his eyes, but turns frequently 
to look at his father's hand.f Is this simply mobil- 
ity of the eyes and of the glance ? Is it not, rather, 
the need of explaining things, of finding the cause 

* The Senses and the Will, p. 88. 

f Compare Darwin : " At nine months and a few days, my son 
learned for himself that when a hand, or any other object, pro- 
jected its shadow on a wall in front of him, he must look for the 
object behind him." 



:u 



38 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

of what is observed ? The same child, at almost 
the same age, if the end of a bell-cord was put into 
his hands, followed the cord with his eyes up to the 
very ceiling, trying to raise his head still farther. 
Is this simply a glance prolonged ? Is it not, rather, 
a thought being sketched, the thought of seeking 
the principle, the origin of what is seen ? At 
twelve months, at fourteen months, there is no 
longer any doubt ; the child will reason in a very 
apparent way. At fifteen months. Marcel, who can 
walk, is playing with a balloon in the dining-room. 
Suddenly he shows a desire to go towards the closed 
door, and seems to have forgotten his plaything. I 
cry out at his lack of constancy. Not at all ; the 
child indeed does go towards the door, but it is to 
open it, then to return to the balloon and to push 
it with his foot through the open door. Doubtless, 
in this example, as in all those we might cite, there 
are neither abstract principles nor general ideas; 
there are only sensible notions and particular facts. 
But what matters the kind of material for the rea- 
soning ? The logical force is there none the less. 

II 

Reason is the worker, language is the tool. The 
worker is perfected only because the tool itself is 
arranged and organized. And there is here be- 
tween the function and the organ such a depend- 
ence, such a close relation, that language could 
not be formed without this minimum of thought 
which the child develops spontaneously ; and that, 
on the other hand, reason could not attain to its 



JUDGMENT AND REASONING 39 

maximum development if language did not come 
to its aid. 

When the child begins to speak we should not 
expect from him all at once an exact and rigorous 
expression of his thought. His judgment is very- 
clear, very decided ; but, because of the insuffil- 
ciency of his language, he does not arrive at a 
complete proposition provided with all of its gram- 
matical elements. Thus the child will habitually 
suppress the verb to he, the word is, which is the 
sign of affirmation, the logical copula of two asso- 
ciated ideas. The substantive verb is the abstract 
verb par excellence, and the child, who still man- 
ages abstractions only with difficulty, usually pre- 
fers the attributive verbs, which are, in a way, the 
concrete verbs. Deaf-mutes do the same ; they will 
invent, for example, the verb to naughty, and will 
say Paul nauglities, instead of Paul is naughty. 
And in this the child^s language reproduces what 
we find true of primitive tongues, which, in their 
synthetic tendencies, ignore or neglect the sub- 
stantive verb.* In other cases he contents him- 
self, in his naive sentences, with a simple juxtapo- 
sition of the subject and the attribute : Paul good, 
Paul had ; or he uses a verb with no personal mod- 
ification : Paul cry more, Paul disohey more. 

* "In primitive languages the logical form of the proposition 
in three parts is sometimes represented by two terms, sometimes 
by a single one. The simple juxtaposition of a noun or of a pro- 
noun and an attribute is enough to constitute a verbal form ; 
several tenses of the Sanskrit conjugation, of the Greek conjuga- 
tion, contain only two elements, a radical attributive and a pro- 
nominal." (Egger, op. cit., p. 48.) 



40 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

Whence comes this inaptitude or this disability 
on the part of the child to use the logical copula, 
the monosyllable is, although it is so easy to pro- 
nounce ? Maillet claims to see in this the proof 
that the personality of the child is still very little 
developed, and that, in consequence, he hesitates to 
bring it in, to implicate it, as the adult does in his 
affirmations.* The same author adds : " The expe- 
riences of the child are not yet sufficiently numer- 
ous to give him confidence. Even in affirming he 
seems to be continuing his inquiries and his ques- 
tions." It seems to us that this is very inexact 
psychology, and that the contrary is true. Pre- 
cisely because he has as yet little experience, the 
child is very affirmative in his judgments. For the 
rest, we know that a positive and presumptuous 
judgment generally coincides with ignorance. It 
is the minds most limited in their knowledge that 
show themselves most entirely the most absolute in 
their affirmations. Doubt and indecision result 
^ only from an abundance of ideas. It is with full 
assurance and perfect conviction that the child 
gravely expresses his little judgments: ^' Baby nice. 
Little sister had ! " 

No, if the child's propositions are incorrect, and 
they are, it is not from a lack of energy in the affir- 
mation or in the negation ; it is, in the first place, a 
case of verbal inexperience, which is common to all 
those in whom education, in point of language, 
leaves much to be desired. What we call " negro 
talk," so much like " baby talk," is a proof of this. 

* M. E. Maillet, op. cit., p. 540. 



JUDGMENT AND REASONING 41 

In the same way tlie repugnance of deaf-mntes to 
using the verb to he is equalled only by their awk- 
wardness when they do try to use it. They will 
write, for example, piling the substantive verb on 
top of the attributive verb, " I am eat the bread," 
" Paul is walks/^ But the essential reason is that 
the child is still incapable of distinguishing the 
different parts, of analyzing the three elements of 
each one of his judgments. Each of these affirma- 
tions is a whole, a block, which he cannot separate. 
It is even permissible to suppose that in the little 
sentences in which he tries his thought he does not 
even separate the words that compose them. He 
resembles that foreigner cited by Breal who said, 
" I have looked in vain in all the French dictiona- 
ries for a word that is used a great deal in Paris, 
and in circumstances the most diverse, the word 
ga y est." 

Let us not expect exactness of language and 
precision of form from the lisping child. He has 
done better than we could expect, to learn to ex- 
press, no matter how, in so short a time, in the 
face of mistakes and the difficulties of a language 
that he partly invents, the first affirmations of his 
judgment. Taine gives a striking example of this 
early need of judging, which struggles against the 
obstacles of speech and which triumphs over them. 
"A little girl eighteen months old laughs heartily 
when her mother and her nurse play by hiding 
themselves behind a chair or a door and saying, 
' Coucou ' [Cuckoo] . At the same time, when her 
soup is too hot, when she goes near the fire, when 
she extends her hands towards a candle, when they 



42 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

put her hat on in the garden because it is hot, they 
say to her ' Qa hrule' [It burns]. Here are two 
striking words, which designate for her the strong- 
est of her painful sensations, the strongest of her 
agreeable sensations. One day, when out on the 
terrace, seeing that the sun was disappearing be- 
hind the hill, she said, ^ A hule coucouj This was 
a complete judgment."* The child, indeed, will 
put no more than this in his affirmation when he 
can say, " The sun has gone to bed." Other exam- 
ples : A little girl, in complaining of her physician 
and of his disagreeable orders, said, "Doctor, 
naughty girl." Another child, to designate a large 
tree or a small tree, says, " Baby tree," " Papa tree." 
Every judgment, as we know, presupposes two 
ideas brought together, or, to speak more exactly, 
according to Kant, the act of " subsuming,'^ of 
making one idea contain another. Intuitive judg- 
ments, at least those which do not result from a 
comparison^ and which are made immediately from 
the perception, or, to state it better, which coexist 
with the perception, are judgments of being ; that 
is to say, in this case, without consciousness of it, 
the mind places the objects and the qualities that 
it perceives in the most general category of all, the 
category of being. It is only the abstract reflec- 
tion of the psychologist, however, that makes this 
logical operation clear to the consciousness. Is it 
necessary to say that the child takes no account 
of this, when it is certain that even the adult does 
not make this analysis in the majority of his intel- 

* Taine, De I'lntelligence, vol. i, p. 43. 



JUDGMENT AND REASONING 43 

lectual acts ? Judgment, even in the grown man, 
much, more in the child, is oftenest only an irre- 
sistible impulse that springs spontaneously from 
the perception, whether of objects or of the rela- 
tion of objects. 

The judgment of being — that is to say, the per- 
ception that becomes discernment and belief — has 
assuredly no need of the cooperation of language. 
This is not the case with the judgment of relation, 
which associates either a particular idea with a 
general idea, or two general ideas.* As soon as 
generalization appears words are useful, if not 
necessary, to serve as supports to the idea. And 
this is the reason that the judgment of relation 
does not really show itself in children until they 
begin to speak ; up to that time they are confined 
almost entirely to the judgment of being. 

We must guard, moreover, against attributing 
to language alone the progress of judgment ; for it 
comes also in great part from the development of 
observation, and from the fact that as the mind be- 
comes interested in more things it collects a larger 
number of perceptions. It is towards the end of 
the second year that we hear children express judg- 
ments like these : " Sister naughty " ; " Dick big 
bow-wow,'^ for " Dick is a big dog " ; " Pretty 
house"; "All gone," to indicate that there is no 

* We do not understand at all what certain psychologists 
mean when they speak of "judgments not involving general 
concepts," of which they give as examples sentences like this: 
" Peter is smaller than Paul." Here, they say, are " judgments 
that involve no concept." The idea of " smaller " is, however, a 
concept, a general idea. (Maillet, op. cii., p. 589.) 



44 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

more, that the milk-cup is empty. In all these 
examples we find that the subject is individual. 
It is not until a little later that the child will come 
to pronounce judgments on classes of objects, when 
he will say, for instance : " Bad children play with 
mud " ; " Good children do not put their fingers in 
their nose." 

Sully says that the first explicit judgments are 
characterized by individual objects, and he cites 
several examples of this which prove that a word, 
a single word, is enough for the child when he 
formulates his thought. " When a child of eighteen 
months, on seeing a dog, exclaims ' Bow-wow,' or, on 
tasting his food, exclaims ' Ot ' (hot), or, on letting 
fall his toys, says 'Dou' (down), he may be said to 
be implicitly framing a judgment: ^That is a dog,' 
' This milk is hot,' ' My plaything is down/ " * A 
little later he uses more words. At nineteen months 
the child observed by Sully associated two words, and 
said, "Dit hi" for "Sister is crying." Some time after- 
ward he went so far as to use three words and more : 
" Ka in milk," "There is something dirty in the 
milk " ; ^'Dit dow ga " for " My sister is on the grass." 

It has been claimed that in these first enuncia- 
tions the child, by a sort of natural and normal 
inversion, always places the attribute before the 
subject, that he says invariably, " Pretty flower " ; 
" Pretty mountain " ; " Bad pussy " ; " Bad Medor." \ 
As far as we have observed, we have not found that 
this is a general law, a constant rule of the child's 
language ; and the idea would seem to be contra- 

* Sully, op. cit., p. 435. f Maillet, op. ciL, p. 541. 



JUDGMENT AND REASONING 45 

dieted by the observations made on English, chil- 
dren, who violate the grammatical rules of their 
language in placing the adjective after the noun. 
Doubtless we cannot speak of the child's language 
as of a regular and methodical tongue, in which, as 
Fenelon says, "we always see a nominative sub- 
stantive coming first, leading its adjective by the 
hand." The child is freer in his ways, and he often 
reverses the logical order. But he conforms to it, 
too, and his sentence takes such and such a turn, 
according as his attention has been struck forcibly 
by the subject or by the attribute, by the object or 
by the quality. 

Mr. Sully is more exact in his observations con- 
cerning negative judgments. He states first that 
the child he has studied, whom he designates by 
the letter C, has not expressed judgments of this 
sort until the third year, which fact tends to prove 
that this form of expression is a little repugnant to 
the mind of the child. What is certain in any 
case is, that they have a way all their own of em- 
ploying it. C, in his third year, took up the habit 
of expressing himself in this way : " Baby go into 
the water, no ! " " It was observed further in the 
case of two children, that during the third year 
they were apt to couple affirmative and negative 
statements — e. g., ' This I's cup, not mamma's cup.' 
'This nice bow-wow, not nasty bow-wow.'"* In 
the natural movement of his thought the child 
begins with afiirmation, and it is only in correcting 
himself, in retracting, that he comes to negation. 

* Sully, op. ciL, pp. 330-321. 



46 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

III 

From, judgment to reasoning is only a step. It 
has even been held that in every judgment there is 
reasoning : explicit and conscious reasoning, if it is a 
question of reflective judgments ; implicit and more 
or less unconscious if it is a question of judgments 
which, though apparently immediate, are, however, 
only conclusions from hidden premises. The same 
logical force that has just brought the child to 
compare notions, now sends him on to grasp the 
relation of two judgments; and this is reasoning. 
This faculty of comparison will not seem so extra- 
ordinary if we remember that at first it is brought 
to bear only on particular facts. The reasoning of 
the child does not go beyond induction, and the sort 
of induction that has nothing scientific about it, 
that infers merely one fact from another fact. The 
child foresees that the candle will burn him, because 
it has already burned him. He gives up a forbidden 
act because he remembers that the first fault brought 
its punishment. He counts on his mother^s running 
to him at the sound of his cries, because yesterday 
or the day before she did this. In all his little rea- 
sonings, the thought of the child goes very simply 
from a first fact, perceived by the senses and held 
by the memory, to another fact of the same sort.* 

* These inferences do not belong particularly to the human 
species. The cat reasons almost in the same way — for example, 
when, associating the idea of crumbs of bread scattered along the 
walks of the garden with that of the arrival of the sparrows, 
which will come to eat the crumbs, she hides herself in the shrub- 
bery as soon as the crumbs have been scattered. 



JUDGMENT AND REASONING 47 

It awaits the renewal, the return, of what has already 
happened, and we might say that habit, rather than 
reflection, conies in in these first attempts at reason- 
ing, since it reduces itself to foreseeing the repeti- 
tion of a chain of facts observed several times be- 
fore. 

But very soon, while continuing to infer only 
from a particular to a particular, the child goes a 
little farther ; from the fact that serves as a point 
of departure, he reasons, no longer to the reproduc- 
tion of the usual consequence of this fact, but to the 
possibility of a fact, analogous, doubtless, but of 
another sort. Thus a child observed by Sully, at 
two years and two months, pretended to put water 
in a plate to dissolve some pieces of meat, remem- 
bering that in this same way he had dissolved pieces 
of sugar; here it was analogy that directed the 
child. So, in this observation reported by Egger : 
"At four years and two months, Emile sees the 
window closed in a room where some one is smoking. 
He asks himself how the smoke is to get out, and 
he answers himself by pointing to the cracks around 
the windows. ^For,^ said he, ^the smoke is very 
small {toute petite) ; it is like water ; when I put 
water in my hand it goes out there ' ; and he showed 
the opening in his fingers pressed one against the 
other.^^ * Analogy led the child in this naive in- 
duction. He compared the way liquids and gases 
act, and concluded that what is true of one fluid is 
true of another. 

Other examples : A child that had been told often, 

* Egger, op. cit., p. 56. 



48 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

as all children are, that he would grow with age, 
amused himself with a short slender switch, and 
seemed to be trying to use it for a cane. His mother 
spoke of it, and the child answered, " I will use the 
stick for a cane when the cane grows larger." 
Sully, from whom we borrow this fact, believes 
that he sees in this response a general principle ad- 
mitted implicitly by the child, that all things tend 
to grow with time. We believe, however, that there 
is here only the application to another particular 
object, to a stick of wood, what the child has ob- 
served or been told about himself. In universal 
laws, applicable to all objects, to all beings, the 
child has no interest. Even in the pretended de- 
ductions attributed to the child, we see only simple 
inferences from particular to particular. " Emile," 
says Egger, " notices on my table one of those cards 
that indicate the place of a guest at a dinner, and 
this card bears my name. He asks me for the other 
card. I do not understand at first, but he soon ex- 
plains to me that the card he is asking for is that 
of invitation, because he has seen invitations to dine 
written on cards of the same kind. Thus every din- 
ner presupposes a card of invitation ; or : you have 
been to dine in town, then you have received and 
ought to have a card of invitation. It will be ten 
years before he learns in his logic what good rea- 
soning he has performed." This, I believe, is forcing 
things a little. It is more than probable that the 
little reasoner in question obeyed simply the asso- 
ciation of two remembrances which represented the 
two cards to him as always accompanying one an- 
other. 



JUDGMENT AND REASONING 49 

We do not think that the child's intelligence can 
go very far beyond the inductions that pass from 
like to like, from one thing to the same thing, induc- 
tions which in any case do not end in general, univer- 
sal propositions. The child infers from yesterday to 
to-day, from to-day to to-morrow, or to the next day, 
from what goes on in his own home or at school, to 
what is going on in a neighbouring house or school. 
There can be no question of expecting conclusions 
that embrace the future, of which he has no idea, or 
the entirety of space, of which as yet he can represent 
to himself only a little corner. How could this little 
creature of a day, so limited in his knowledge, con- 
ceive of the universal ? How, when he has behind 
him only a few months of remembrances, when he 
has taken only a few steps in the world, how could 
he introduce words like always, everywhere, into 
his little inductions ?- 

In the majority of the child's inferences we see 
involved a real notion of causality ; it is an inter- 
esting question to ask, up to what point, and in 
what way the child brings this out from the con- 
fusion of his perceptions. We do not believe that 
he comes to it all at once, as though by a sudden 
bound of the thought. Education — that is to say, 
the action of parents and of those who bring up 
the child — will play a large part in the development 
of the notion of cause. The idea of the relation of 
cause and effect can come only from a constant, 
regular, recognised succession between antecedent 
and consequent. But in badly regulated education, 
where caprice and incoherence reign, in which there 
is neither order nor connection, the child loses his 



50 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

way and finds nothing to prepare him to grasp a 
relation of co-ordination between the different events 
of his life. On the other side, the world of Nature 
is closed to him. He has not, at least in the first 
period, a firm enough nor a penetrating enough 
glance to discover by himself the regular order of 
phenomena and the causal relations of outside 
things. 

It is in the efficacy of his cries, considered as 
means of obtaining a favour, or simply the satisfac- 
tion of his needs, that the little child probably finds 
the germ of the notion of cause. Later, as soon as 
he begins to understand what is said to him, we 
really give him lessons in causal sequence when we 
say, " If you. do that, you will be punished " ; " If 
you walk on the ice, you will slip"; "If you eat 
too much of this fruit, you will be ill." At the 
same time, merely by the fact that he acts and 
that he notices the consequence of his actions : the 
door opens if he pushes it ; the plaything breaks if 
he lets it fall — he becomes attentive to these regu- 
lar successions of facts, and he conceives little by 
little the idea of cause and effect. What is un- 
doubtedly true about this is that towards the third 
year this idea unconsciously governs a large part 
of his thoughts and provokes his incessant ques- 
tions : " What makes the snow ? What makes the 
watch tick ? Why is little brother ill V and the 
whole series of whys. He must have an explana- 
tion, whatever it be ; the most careless sometimes 
sufl&ces, but there must be one. A child two years 
old, who was fed on the milk of a white cow, said : 
" The milk is white because the cow is white ! " 



JUDGMENT AND REASONING 51 

The why of the child seems to us to be a ques- 
tion of causality rather than one of end and aim. 
The child is more curious to understand the origin 
of things than to know their end. It is because the 
idea of the end, the goal, can come only from the 
personal experience of reflective acts, of voluntary 
intentions, which go beyond the level of the little 
child's activity. The end is doubtless a cause, the 
cause to come ; it is the goal, seen in advance by 
our intelligence, and therefore becoming the prin- 
ciple of our efforts. But there is here a delicate 
and relatively subtle conception which the child 
does not approach so easily as he comprehends 
the efiBcient cause. We would not wish to say, 
however, that it could not be developed towards 
the third or fourth year, being suggested by the 
actions that the child already performs with a cer- 
tain premeditation. 

It is then the experience of his own actions, 
much more than the consideration of Nature with- 
out, in its immutable and inflexible laws, that sets 
the child right in his first reasonings of causality. 
If he possesses vaguely the notion of cause, we 
assuredly will not say that, like a little Maine de 
Biran, he draws it from the consciousness of his will 
acting on his muscles ; * but it is none the less true 
that the child, so to speak, moulds his notion of first 
causes on the model of his own actions. This is 
why he will say, if hi's doll falls to the ground, 
" Naughty doll ! " because he fancies all objects are 
animated, made in his own image, and because he 

* See, later on, Chapter VIII. 



62 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

attributes to theni the same principles of action 
that he has observed in himself. 

In order really to assist the beginnings of the 
reasoning of causality, we must take a child four 
or five years old. At five and a half George seems 
very much occupied with the origin of things, and 
he does not seem in the least disposed to respect the 
maxim of Aristotle relating to the regression in 
the series of causes, the famous avdyKTj a-rrjvai. " But,^' 
he repeats insistently, " what was there before God ? 
I want to know that! . . . When this house was 
not here, there was a big hole in its place." The 
child observed by Egger reasoned in almost the 
same way when he was seven and a half. The 
child asked his mother, " What was there before 
the world ? " Answer : " God, who created it.^^ 
"And before God?" "N'othing." To which the 
child replied, "There must have been the place 
where God is."* In these two examples, reason, 
we may say, appears clearly, with the need that it 
will feel of finding a final explanation, a first prin- 
ciple, with the tragic perplexity that the greatest 
philosophers do not escape any more than the child, 
and into which the consideration of the beginning of 
things always throws us. Some of the antinomies 
of Kant exist already as germs in the perplexities 
of the childish intelligence. 

The child^s reason shows itself comparatively 
early in the conception of space, if not in that of 
time, which seems always to be later. This differ- 
ence is easy to understand. The child lives con- 

* Egger, 0J3. cit., p. 55. 



JUDGMENT AND REASONING 53 

stantly in relation with space, and his glance darts 
ont into infinity, while his experience of time is 
still almost nothing. In his conception of space, 
the child does not seem to go beyond the imagina- 
tion of primitive peoples, who willingly give them- 
selves np to consider the heavens as an inclosed 
vault, to which the stars are affixed like golden 
nails. But if he has not the least suspicion of what 
the philosophers call the infinity of space, at least 
he seems very early to imagine as apparently neces- 
sary, though incomprehensible, the existence of 
space, as such, distinct from material things : wit- 
ness the child observed by Egger, who was looking 
for something he could not find, and cried, while 
continuing his search, " It must be true that some- 
thing is somewhere ! " 

TV 

However disposed we may be to grant much to 
the child in point of judgment and of reasoning, 
we cannot hide from ourselves the fact that in this 
matter, too, we must guard against being deceived 
by appearances. Egger has written a pretty chap- 
ter on what he calls " the real weaknesses of intel- 
ligence in children." * 

Let us say at the outset, that without wishing 
it, with all the innocence in the world, the child 
deceives us, dupes us, leads us astray as to the 
power of his intelligence. I do not speak only of 
blindness due to parental love ; we are always 
prompt to interpret most favourably the acts and 

* E. Egger, ojj. cit., part ii, p. 25. 



54: LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

the ways of our sons and daughters, to see in them 
what is not there. In them 

" All metals are gold, all flowers are roses." 

But further than this, by reason of his very nature, 
of the alertness of his memory, and the power of 
his instinct of imitation, the little child imposes 
upon us as to the value and the merit of his judg- 
ment ; and merely by exercising his mechanical 
powers he feigns, and only feigns, the acts of a 
reflective intelligence, which invents and reasons. 
We ought often to ask ourselves, in presence of an 
unexpected reflection, judicious or piquant, of those 
that we call enfants terriUes, whether it is any- 
thing more than a remembrance preserved by a 
faithful memory of a reflection already heard and 
caught, as it were, on the wing, from the lips of 
another. Many seemingly genuine acts of mind for 
which the child is given credit are only remem- 
brances. Where we think that we can admire a 
little prodigy of imagination and originality, there 
is often only a perfect little parrot.* 

On the other hand, it would be unjust to put 
down as weaknesses of intelligence the naivetes, the 
foolish things that slip from the child; they are 
often only awkwardness and ignorance of expres- 



* Add what Rousseau says in a passage in which he over- 
whelms with his irony those children that are endowed with un- 
usual traits : " Is it astonishing that he who is made to say a great 
deal, and allowed to say anything, should make by chance a happy 
witticism 1 It would be more astonishing if he never did do this, 
as it would be if in a thousand falsehoods the astrologer never 
predicted one truth." 



JUDGMENT AND REASONINa 55 

sion. Being still unskilful in the management of a 
language that he is only just learning, he neces- 
sarily makes mistakes; he is embarrassed by the 
complexity of the language ; he becomes confused 
as to words. Some one said to George : " You are 
now four years and a half old, and your brother is 
ten months old/' George, astonished^ replied : " But 
is Marcel, then, older than I ? " * Heedlessness, no 
doubt; but at the same time verbal inexperience, 
the inability to grasp quickly the sense of all the 
words in a sentence, so that the child noticed simply 
the numbers four and a half and ten, and made 
a comparison of them, without troubling himself 
about the words that accompany these numbers : 
years and months. Sometimes it is the employ- 
ment of figurative language that leads the child 
astray, he being naturally disposed to take all the 
words of the language only in their literal sense. 
In a primer the examples are not stated with per- 
fect correctness. George reads this sentence : " My 
mother has taken care of {soigne) my piano." The 
child, surprised, exclaims : " Why, papa, it was 
then a live piano ! " In other cases the mistake is 
caused by a total ignorance of the sense of the ex- 
pressions employed. " I had a wound on my foot," 
says Egger. " It was done up in a piece of white 
linen. Emile, who was nearly two years old, often 
looked with interest at what he called mon petit 
mal. He asked me how it was ; that is to say, he 

* Compare the example given by Egger : " To the question, 
* How old are you ? ' I suggest to my son to reply, ' Three years 
and six months.' He does not understand, and says, with an air 
of astonishment, ' Have I two ages ! ' " 



56 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

understood that I suffered, and lie sympathized 
with my suffering. But then he asked me to give 
him my petit mal. Either the child is very pre- 
cocious as to his charity, or by petit mal he meant 
simply the white linen/' The latter was undoubt- 
edly what the child did mean ; but in this there is 
merely an error of language, of which we see many 
more examples when we talk with peasants, with 
uneducated people. It is not to the child, certainly, 
that Boileau's line is to be applied : " What is con- 
ceived clearly is expressed clearly.^' The soul of 
the child, we might say, in parodying a celebrated 
definition, is often an intelligence betrayed by the 
organs.* 

Nevertheless, there are really weaknesses, intel- 
lectual infirmities, to be charged to the character of 
the nascent mind of a child. Without pretending 
to enumerate all the causes, all the categories of 
these failings, of these gaps of intelligence in proc- 
ess of formation, we shall try to distinguish the 
principal ones. 

The first, it is hardly necessary to say, is the 
small amount of knowledge at the child's disposal. 
His experience is so short! He knows so few 
things! How could he judge with surety, with 

* Almost all the examples reported by Egger are verbal errors. 
Thus the child confounds preter and emprunter {to lend and to 
io7'row), and says, " Do you want to borrow me your seal ? " He 
dislikes to use possessive pronouns, and has difficulty in under- 
standing them. " If I ask him to show me my nose, my eyes, it is 
his own that he will point to, not mine. In order to make myself 
understood, I have to say to him, ' Show me papa's eyes, papa's 
nose.' " 



JUDGMENT AND REASONING 57 

justness ? In this unknown world, of wliicli lie lias 
caught sight of only a few fragments, he gropes, so to 
speak, in the darkness. Why should not his thought 
stumble at every step ? " The ease with which chil- 
dren can be deceived is to be attributed to lack of 
experience far more than to lack of intelligence," 
says Preyer,* and he is right in this. It is not the 
logical sense, the sense of intellectual construction, 
it is above all the materials that are lacking in the 
child, t 

On the other hand, if the notions that he works 
on are necessarily few and almost without variety, 
they are far from being always clear and distinct. 
His ideas are lacking in quality as well as in quan- 
tity. He confounds very different objects under the 
same name. His generalizations are arbitrary and 
jumbled. Papa, mamma, at first serve to designate 
for him all men, all women. J It is only step by 
step that he separates from their primitive con- 
fusion ideas that are essentially distinct. A little 
girl three years and a half old sees the window- 
shutters closed for the night. Night and closing 
shutters are two ideas that are joined in her mind. 
In the morning she goes into a room in which there 

* Development of the Intellect, p. 17. 

f " Children," says Guyau, " are persons of one idea, and 
sometimes reasoners to excess. The child has an essentially log- 
ical mind. For instance, he demands that what one has done 
once, one shall do again, and under the same conditions." 

X Aristotle had noticed this when he wrote : Kal rh Traidia 
8e rh fiev Trpwrov Trpoffayopevei irdvTas rovs &v5pas irarepas Kal /xrjTepas ras 
yvvaiKas, v(mpov 5e Ziopi^^i rovroiv kKanpov. (Physics, Book I, 
chap, i.) 



58 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

are two windows, one on tlie east the other on the 
north side; the latter still has the blinds drawn; 
the child says that it is still night on that side. 

What we ought not to forget, either, is that 
chance, accidental, and superficial associations rule 
the mind of the child. Doubtless he already obeys 
the principal laws of the intellectual nature, but 
apart from the fact that he knows, as yet, only a 
few things, and that he knows these imperfectly, 
we might say that his inferiority in point of intel- 
ligence results above all from this : that time has 
not yet accomplished in his case that natural selec- 
tion which, little by little, discards the unimportant 
images, the trifling relations, to leave only useful 
associations and substantial connections. 

It is evident, moreover, that the child has a 
slight disposition to be logical rather than that he 
possesses the force of mind necessary to follow his 
efforts of reasoning to their end. There can be no 
question of expecting rigorous deductions — deduc- 
tions in proper form — which presuppose the inter- 
vention of abstract principles and of general truths, 
a whole world almost inaccessible to the child's 
intelligence. But even in induction, which is more 
appropriate to his capacity, the child does not, in 
spite of the examples to the contrary that we have 
been able to give, push his investigating researches 
very far.* He stops very quickly in the chain of 
causes. He is contented with little in point of ex- 
planations. He neglects to seek for new causes, 

* This apparent contradiction resolves itself into a question 
of age. 



JUDGMENT AND REASONING 59 

"being satisfied to bring up again by routine the 
causes that he already knows. A baby two years 
old scratched himself, and when asked why the 
blood was on his hands, he replied, " Fell down/' 
In the acts that he performs the child does not even 
know how to use his perceptions so as to connect 
them, how to bind them together. Preyer gives us 
the following : '' When I used to say, ' Give the 
ring/ I always laid an ivory ring, that was tied to a 
thread before the child, on the table. I now said 
the same thing, after an interval of a week, while 
the same ring was hanging near the chair by a red 
thread a foot long, so that the child, as he sat on the 
chair, could just reach it, but only with much pains. 
He made a grasp now, upon getting the sound im- 
pression ' ring,' not at the thread, which would have 
made the seizure of the ring, hanging freely, very 
easy for him, but directly at the ring hanging far 
below him, and gave it to me. And when the com- 
mand was repeated it did not occur to him to touch 
the thread.'' * In this case we see that the concep- 
tion of the relation between two objects equally 
perceived escapes the child. 

Even when the childish intelligence has ac- 
quired sufficient number of distinct notions, definite 
enough to be used, we find one or two general causes 
that stop its flight. The first is the inconstancy of 
impressions. We will not go so far as to say with 
Rousseau, that pitiless slanderer of the child, whom 
he did not understand : " His ideas, however many 
there may be, have in his head neither sequence nor 

* Development of the Intellect, p. 13. 



60 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

connection; nothing fixed, nothing positive in all 
that he thinks." Rousseau goes to extremes in his 
generalizing ; on the contrary, the child often gives 
proof of stubbornness that shows only a too great 
fixedness in his ideas. Let us acknowledge, how- 
ever, that most often his thought easily leaves an 
object that it is considering to pass to another ob- 
ject ; it fiits from idea to idea, as a bird from branch 
to branch, and in this perpetual motion it wastes 
itself, it scatters itself without profit. 

The greatest cause of intellectual weakness in 
the child, apart from the poverty of his knowledge, 
is his hastiness of judgment, the absence of re- 
flection. The heedlessness that almost always char- 
acterizes youth has no more certain beginning. In 
the adult, in the reflective man, the thought has 
hold of itself, takes its time, interpolates between 
the conception and the judgment a greater or less 
number of intermediates. In the child the thought 
bursts forth, leaps forth as though impelled by a 
spring, with almost the characteristics of reflex 
motion. His intelligence responds, by an immedi- 
ate reaction, to the excitation of ideas, as his will 
yields, without resistance, to the solicitations of his 
desires. In other words, we do not find in the little 
child the faculty of intellectual inhibition to mod- 
erate, to suspend, to ripen his judgment, any more 
than we find the faculty of voluntary inhibition to 
temper his impulses. He springs, so to speak, on 
the first idea that presents itself just as he throws 
himself on his playthings, heedlessly, fearlessly. 
The majority of his errors, of his naivetes, or of his 
absurdities of thought, result from the same cause 



JUDGMENT AND REASONING 61 

that brings about his false step and bis falls; be 
goes too quickly and burls bimself too impatiently 
at bis goal. 

It is none tbe less true tbat in tbese weaknesses 
of tbe cbild's intelligence we can see notbing tbat 
resembles intrinsic vice or original depravity any 
more tban in tbe little faults of bis moral life. Tbe 
cbild is not more illogical intellectually tban be is 
immoral practically. We ougbt to see in tbe weak- 
nesses and infirmities of bis faculties only tbe pro- 
visory and fleeting defects of a state of crisis and of 
a period of growtb. 



CHAPTER III 

LEARNING TO SPEAK 

I. Difficulties in acquiring a language. — All the physical and 
moral faculties are involved. — The emission of sounds. — The 
hearing of sounds. — The vocal and the acoustic mechanism. — 
Action of intellectual faculties. — Parallel between impediments 
. in speech of an adult and the imperfections of language in the 
child. II. At what age does the child begin to speak 1 — Dif- 
ferent steps to distinguish in the evolution of language. — First 
vocal manifestations of the child. — Their characteristics : they 
are spontaneous and without meaning. — They have meaning 
only for those who listen to them. — At first instinctive, the 
emission of sounds becomes reflex, called forth by acoustic im- 
pressions. — The child comes to comprehend the sense of what 
is said to him. — Understanding signs precedes the employment 
of signs. — Interpretation of gestures. — Gestures and intona- 
tion. — Gesture accompanies and aids the first vocal signs. — 
The child speaks from the first day that he gives meaning to 
any articulation. III. The child's spontaneity in acquiring 
language. — Opinions of Romanes, of Maine de Biran, of Albert 
Lemoine. — Observations of Taine and of Egger. — Three cases 
to distinguish : a. The child furnishes the sound and parents 
give it its meaning ; h. The child invents at once the sound 
and the' sense; c. Parents furnish the sound and the child 
gives it various meanings. — The child generalizes the meaning 
of words. — Different proofs of the child's inventive force in 
matter of language. — The case of Laura Bridgman. — This in- 
ventive force increases when circumstances favour it. — Imita- 
tion is, in the same way, the essential condition of the forma- 
tion of language. — Onomatopoeia is an imitation. — The child 
62 



LEARNING TO SPEAK ^3 

wishes to imitate before he has the power. IV. The child's 
logical sense in the formation of words and the construction 
of sentences. — The child's barbarisms and mistakes. — Construc- 
tions apparently irregular. — The use of the negative. — Com- 
parison with the language of deaf-mutes. — The progress of the 
child's phraseology. 



The education of speech, whicli is the highest 
act of human evolution, seems slow sometimes to 
impatient parents, who complain that their child 
does not talk early enough, only to regret after- 
ward when he fatigues them with his prattling, 
that he talks so much. The truth is that, on the 
contrary, they ought to wonder at the marvelous 
facility with which the child can, in a few months, 
learn to talk. Let us consider the difficulties that 
we ourselves have to conquer, we who are in pos- 
session of all the strength of our organs and facul- 
ties, if we would add the knowledge of a strange 
tongue to those that we already speak. And what 
is this in comparison with the effort necessary to 
the child in order to pass the natural aphasia, the 
normal alalia of the first days, to easy and more 
and more complete possession of the mother tongue ? 
How many different elements and successive de- 
grees does the elaboration of speech include ? Phys- 
ical organs and intellectual faculties aid equally in 
the operation. It is necessary, on the one side, that 
the physiological mechanism should be organized 
and regulated, to assure either the utterance or the 
hearing of sound ; it is necessary, on the other hand, 
that the intelligence and the will should seize upon 
the organs, should master them, to adapt them and 



64 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

adjust them to tlieir ends; that perception should 
distinguish the sounds heard ; that memory should 
retain them, that a persevering attention should fix 
them in the memory; that the thought, finally, 
should introduce sense, meaning, into each articu- 
lation uttered spontaneously or received from the 
lips of others ; that it should give soul, so to speak, 
to what is at first only a material covering, empty 
of all contents. In the case of language, taking 
possession sums up all the child's progress, because 
here all his faculties work together. 

Let us go at once into details. The mechanism 
of language presupposes first the organs of utter- 
ance, of the production of sound, all that renders 
possible the first inarticulate sounds, the cries, the 
wails of the first age ; then sounds more and more 
articulate, modulations of the voice — the motions of 
the larynx, of the tongue and of the lips. Moreover, 
this faculty of articulation progresses only slowly, 
according to the law of the least effort. Up to two 
years, the child articulates only very incorrectly, 
and is powerless to produce several sounds to which 
he seems to have an invincible repugnance. It is 
necessary that the structure of the vocal nerves 
should be completed, that the vocal cords should 
stretch, that the muscles of the organs of speech, 
essentially voluntary, should be strengthened and 
made supple in order to permit the will to direct 
them. The human voice must succeed to the in- 
stinctive cries.* The consonants must be joined to 

* According to Egger, the transition from the cry to the voice 
would be appreciable towards the end of the second month. Ac- 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 65 

the vowels, and the indistinct sounds of the first 
weeks and of the first months must take form and 
consistency.* 

But in order to be capable of speaking, it is 
necessary also to be capable of hearing. Deaf-mutes 
are only deaf ; they can also, as the result of the 
artificial methods applied nowadays to their educa- 
tion prove, succeed in emitting sounds, in pronounc- 
ing words, f If they do not speak naturally, as those 
who can hear, speak, it is simply because they do 
not hear ; it is because the human voice and the 
sounds of Nature produce no impression on the sense 
that is lacking, and so do not suggest the imitation 
to them. We must then take account of the organs 
and the functions of the hearing apparatus as an 
essential part of the faculty of speech. But the 
child is born deaf ; he does not hear himself even ; 
he does not hear the cries that escape from him on 
his entrance into the world. This total deafness 
will, it is true, last only a few hours ; but it will 
take longer — several weeks, certainly — before the 
child can seize distinctly and delicately the shades 

cording to Preyer, it is only in the ninth month that the child's 
voice, often very strong, but inarticulate, is finally modulated. 

* According to Romanes, this was probably the order in the 
evolution of articulation ; " The natural cries being, above all, 
furnished by the throat and the larynx, without much participa- 
tion by the tongue and the lips, the first efforts at articulation 
must have produced vowels, to which were afterward added the 
guttural and the labial consonants. Then the liquids, and finally 
the Unguals would have been used." (Mental Evolution in Man, 
p. 360.) 

f See, for example, the work of Goguillot, Comment on fait 
parler les sourds-muets, Paris, Masson, 1890, 



QQ LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

of sound, and even the sounds themselves. The hard- 
ness or lack of delicacy in hearing often explains 
the slowness of the progress of speech. The weak- 
ness of the instrument of articulation is not the only 
cause of this, but it is undoubtedly true that, slow 
or rapid, the adaptation of the acoustic organs is one 
of the first conditions of the acquisition of language. 
It was only at eighteen months that the child ob- 
served by Preyer recognised the acoustic differ- 
ences of consonants pronounced before him.* 

We shall see farther on that the child has his 
share of spontaneity and of invention in the crea- 
tion of language. It is none the less true, however, 
that he is guided, above all, by his auditory impres- 
sions and by imitation. What his ear has heard, 
his mouth will finish by repeating, but this on one 
condition : that, thanks to the operations that are 
going on in his brain, what was at first only the 
excitation of the acoustic nerves becomes the mov- 
ing impulse of the nerves and of the vocal muscles. 
The action of the cerebral organs is necessary, then, 
to render possible the communication by which the 
external impressions of hearing may be transformed 
into mental images, which, in their turn, will give 
place to appropriate motions in the organ of speech, f 



* Preyer, Development of the Intellect, p. 130. Preyer observed 
his child every day, for the first three years, to find out the begin- 
nings of language. The account of these long and minute observa- 
tions will be found full of interest (pp. 99-188). 

f Preyer calls attention to the fact that " the purely peripheric 
processes of articulation have been in play a long time, even when 
it is impossible for the child to repeat a simple ah or pa ; for the 
child pronounces these sounds and others by himself ; but as yet 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 67 

And it is not immediately that the child^s brain 
acquires the development necessary to bring about 
this action. 

When, however, the material means of the vocal 
mechanism are finally suflS.ciently developed to be 
capable of responding, there still remains every- 
thing to be done. The life of speech has not yet 
begun. The sounds emitted by the child have still 
nothing expressive about them. He produces them 
mechanically, unconsciously, without attaching any 
meaning to them, at the most like a game, for the 
pleasure that he derives from the motions of the 
tongue, of the lips, and of the other organs of the 
voice. He attaches no meaning to them. On the 
other hand, he does not understand the sounds that 
he hears. Moreover, he has much trouble in dis- 
tinguishing them, in knowing where he is in his 
auditory impressions. Preyer's son was six months 
old when his father, showing him one ear, and say- 
ing, " Where is the other ear ? " trained him by fre- 
quent repetitions to indicate correctly first one ear 
and then the other. " Now, then," Preyer goes on to 
say, " the thing was to apply what had been learned 
to the eye. When one eye had been pointed out, I 
asked, ' Where is the other eye ? ' The child grasped 
at an ear, with the sight of which the sound other 
was now associated." * How many analogous mis- 
takes retard the progress of language ! 

The greatest of all the difficulties, however, that 

he does not control central organs sufficiently strong to join them, 
to make the auditory impressions act on the motor organs of 
speech." 

* The Development of the Intellect, p. 128. 



68 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

which constitutes the rub, so to speak, of the acqui- 
sition of language, is that the child, when he can 
make use of his intelligence to grasp the relation 
between a sound and an object or the idea of this 
object, between any utterance and a need that he 
feels, in trying to express his desires, voluntarily 
makes use of the voice that he has employed for a 
long time only as a bird chirps — without intention, 
without purpose. Doubtless this moment, which 
is all-important in the life of the child, has been 
prepared for, anticipated, by another moment — that 
in which, before thinking out his own speech, he 
has understood the speech of others. But the prob- 
lem is really solved only on the day when he can 
intentionally give to his own utterance a clear and 
determinate signification. Maine de Biran made 
the existence of the feeling of the ego, the human 
personality, date from this day. "There comes,^' 
he said, " a moment when the existence of the child 
ceasing to be purely sensitive, that of the human 
being will begin ; and this moment coincides with 
that in which the child, who has cried as he has 
done everything else, without intention, begins to 
perceive these cries, these motions, carried on with- 
in himself without his volition, by a force whether 
natural or vital, whether supernatural or divine, 
and he repeats them voluntarily by his own force, 
and attaches to them for the first time an intention 
or a meaning." * 

When in his normal evolution the child has 
come, sooner or later, to speak easily, this final 

* Maine de Biran, M. de Bonald in the QEuvres inedites, p; 274. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 69 

state is then a result of a chain of operations of 
♦which the regular and easy working obscures from 
us the complexity of the elements that aid in mak- 
ing it possible. An attentive observation of the 
child and of the beginnings of language leads to 
the discovery of the different i3arts of the mechan- 
ism, the multiple operations of the faculty of speech, 
as they enter successively into play. An interest- 
ing counterproof, however, is that the examination 
of the weaknesses and diseases of language in the 
adult shows us under clear and durable forms the 
equivalent, the pathological likeness of these suc- 
cessive states, which in the baby are only fleeting 
periods, the natural phases of physiological and of 
psychological evolution. In other words, there is a 
striking parallelism between the different normal 
situations that the child passes over while acquiring 
the language, and the abnormal states into which 
weaknesses, whether physical or moral, throw the 
adult while losing it. 

We shall cite only a few examples of this.* 
Thus it is found that victims of aphasia can some- 
times hear and understand all that is said around 
them, can read easily, but are at the same time 
unable to pronounce a word or to write a line. 
This corresponds to what happens in the first period 
of the child^s life, when, already intelligent enough 
to grasp the meaning of the words addressed to 
him, the child has not as yet the power to repeat 
them, whether because the structure of the vocal 

* See in Preyer (Development of the Intellect, chap, xvii, pp. 
33-62) the parallel between difficulties of speech in the adult and 
the imperfections of language in the child. 



70 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

nerves is still imperfect, or because lie has not as 
yet enough will to direct them. * 

In other cases, on the contrary, in certain insane 
people, the organs of outward expression are not 
injured, but the intelligence, the comprehension, is 
lacking. There are forms of dementia in which the 
patient delights in a flow of words absolutely with- 
out sense. So we can see in the child a phase dur- 
ing which he prattles, chatters like a parrot, with- 
out the slightest sense. 

There are melancholia patients who only with 
the greatest difficulty can bring themselves to pro- 
nounce a word or two, and who are plunged again 
immediately afterward into profound silence. So 
the child sometimes begins to speak, then stops, and 
is silent during weeks, and even months. f 

Finally, we find in insane people, in whom there 
remains no more than unformed ddbris of language, 
some incoherent and unconnected syllables. Is this 
not, to a certain extent, the image of that rudi- 
mentary state in which the child finds himself 
when he can only lisp single words without co- 
ordination, without sequence ? How many other 
analogies we might note! Invalids who sputter 
because their tongue is paralyzed ; those who have 
lost the faculty of understanding signs of whatever 
sort ; those who repeat incessantly the same word, 

* The child understands gestures before he understands words ; 
so there are insane people who understand gestures and obey them, 
when they have lost all power to understand the meaning of 
words. 

f Sounds, very clearly enunciated for some time, afterward 
disappear. Preyer notes this, p. 103. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK Yl 

the same sentence ; those who, ruled by sense alone, 
break forth into rapid, voluble speech ; in all the 
forms of aphasia, in a word, whether because of 
the lesion of organs or of the weakness of the in- 
telligence, or of lack of will-power, the adult can 
lapse back into the weaknesses that characterize 
the first gropings of language in the child, and so 
produce, in a way, a caricature of them. What is 
disease in the one, however, is only weakness in the 
other, and sad as is the sight of a man that a 
morbid fatality gradually deprives of speech, it is, 
on the contrary, a charming picture that the child 
offers us in the regular growth of his intelligence, 
as he advances to the different stages of speech, as 
the intelligence comes, little by little, from the 
cloud that enveloped it, as Mme. Necker de Saus- 
sure says, or, following the expression of Victor 
Hugo, as " day breaks in his brain." 

" Paul avait chaque mois un begaiement nouveau, 
Effort de la pensee a travers la parole, 
Sorte d'ascension lente du raot qui vole, 
Puis tombe et se releve avec un gai frisson, 
Et ne peut etre idee et s'acheve en chanson, 
Paul assemblait des sons, leur donnait la volee, 
Scandait on ne salt quelle obscure strophe ailee, 
Jasait, causait, glosait, sans se taire un instant." 

II 

We shall not insist on the question at what age 
the child really begins to speak. Although chil- 
dren show great differences in their facility of ex- 
pression, in the precocity or the slowness of their 
language, it is allowable to say that generally they 



72 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

lisp their first intelligent words towards the middle 
of the second year, and that in the course of the 
third year they acquire all the essentials of the 
faculty of speech. Mme. Necker says that a well- 
endowed child speaks well at two years. The chil- 
dren that we have observed, without being less 
intelligent than others, have been slower than this. 
Tiedemann's son was twenty-three months old when 
he pronounced his first complete sentences, but they 
were very short : " He is there." " He has gone to 
bed." At twenty-three months Preyer's son pro- 
nounced his first judgment in ordinary language, 
a single word, in saying intentionally lieiss (hot) to 
refuse a cup of boiling milk that was offered him ; 
but he was about two years and a half old before 
he associated several words in making sentences. 
It seems established that girls are usually in ad- 
vance of boys, which, moreover, is only a particular 
case of the general law by which the intelligence 
of women has a more rapid evolution than that of 
men.* 

More important, however, than the question of 
date — always uncertain and variable, by reason of 
differences of physical or moral aptitude, by reason 
also of the influence exerted in different places by 
the surroundings of the child and by milder or more 
rigorous training — is the precise determination of the 
different stages that the child sooner or later arrives 
at and crosses before he knows how to talk. It is 
from the first hour of life — let us not forget this — 

* In the idiot there is usually more or Jess slowness of speech. 
But, in contrast to normal children, idiots understand no more 
than they say. (D. Sollier, op. cit., p. 183.) 



LEARNING TO SPEAK Y3 

that this work of preparation begins. As soon as 
he is born the child learns to speak^ and for two or 
three years we might say that no day, no moment, 
is lost in the laborious apprenticeship of speech. 
Let us try, then — in a subject that would admit of 
much more ample development,* and in which ob- 
servation is easier than in any other part of the 
psychology of the child, since here the facts are 
immediately discernible — let us try to mark by a 
few strokes the principal periods and the successive 
progress. 

1. In the very beginning we must notice that in 
the first period the vocal manifestations of the child 
have a double character : first, they are absolutely 
spontaneous, the child neither repeats nor imitates ; 
secondly, they have for him no meaning, no inten- 
tional significance, being purely mechanical actions 
in which the intelligence has no part. 

In this vocal gesticulation of the child, more- 
over, there is to be distinguished, on the one hand, 
the cries that express corporal states, disagreeable 
or agreeable sensations, by which he relieves his 
discomfort and shows that he is hungry or cold, 
that he suffers, or on the contrary, more rarely, 
that he is satisfied and joyous ; f and, on the other 
hand, the sounds emitted without precise cause, 
which are only a kind of babbling, an instinctive 

* Preyer has devoted one-third of his work on the Mind of the 
Child entirely to the question of language. Romanes treats of 
language almost exclusively in his Mental Evolution of Man. 

f According to Preyer, the cries uttered by the child, if wo 
would represent them by vowels, would be almost equivalent to 
the sound ua, a short u followed by an Italian a. 



74 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

exercising of his vocal cords, a sort of special mus- 
cular play. 

Observe the child in his first period, towards the 
sixth or the eighth month ; sometimes he cries because 
he is wet, because he feels a pain, because he desires 
this or that ; to each need that is felt corresponds 
immediately a particular cry ; sometimes when he 
has been fed and is satisfied, carelessly lying in his 
cradle, he prattles in a language that has meaning 
neither for him nor for others ; he carries on these 
monologues composed of sounds more or less articu- 
late ; he gives himself up to the simple pleasure of 
moving the muscles of his voice long before he is 
capable of talking, just as he will stretch his legs 
and exercise the muscles of locomotion long before 
he can walk. 

Preyer has carefully noted from day to day, in 
his own child, what vowels, what consonants ap- 
peared successively,* and how the precise articula- 
tions came little by little to give form to cries at 
first indistinct and confused. It will be possible 
some day, perhaps, when observations of the same 
kind have been often repeated, when they are made to 
correspond one with the other, to determine exactly, 
by reason of the material facility in the emission of 
this or that sound, the order of succession of the 
various articulations in the natural language of the 
child. It will be possible also to tell what sounds 
correspond to the expression of comfort or to that 
of discomfort, to hunger and to thirst, to astonish- 

* Preyer says that he heard the first consonant pronounced 
on the forty-third day. The child said very distinctly am-ma, 
(Development of the Intellect, p. 102.) 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 75 

ment or to joy, that is, if it is true, as we think 
it is, that natural reasons make such and such an 
emission of voice the especial sign of such and such 
a sensation rather than of any other. 

But what is at present indisputable, is that these 
cries, which become more complicated from day to 
day, which change continually, are the work of Na- 
ture, of instinct, or of heredity. They have indeed 
only slight connection with the words of ordinary 
language.* The proof of this is that the child pro- 
duces them a long time before he can, I will not say 
understand, but simply discriminate the sounds of 
his mother's voice. The proof, too, is that he will 
have a great deal of trouble, a little later, in repro- 
ducing the syllables pronounced before him. 

What is also indisputable is that the cries of the 
child have no meaning except for those who listen 
to them. An attentive mother quickly recognises 
what constitute the cries of pain, the unconscious 
cries of appeal for nourishment. She interprets 
them and satisfies them. But the child who utters 
them does not hear them, and he is in the peculiar 
situation of a person speaking a strange language, 
unintelligible to himself and intelligible only to the 
strangers to whom he is addressing himself. The 
child will require time to introduce a meaning, a de- 
sire, an idea, an act of will, into the sounds that have 

* " By far the greater part of the consonant sounds produced 
by the exercise of the tongue and the lips cannot be represented 
in print ; just as the more prolonged and more manifold move- 
ments of the extremities, movements made by the child when he 
has eaten his fill, and is not sleepy, and is left to himself, cannot 
be drawn or described." (Development of the Intellect, p. 105.) 



76 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

at first, so to speak, only a unilateral significance. 
For this it will be necessary — and experience alone 
will teach, it to liim, little by little — for him to 
bave recognised that by bis cries be made people 
obey bim, tbat be got wbat be wanted or turned 
aside wbat be feared ; for bim to bave acquired tbe 
consciousness of tbe utility of bis vocal actions, and 
for bim to bave in consequence tbe idea of emitting 
tbem voluntarily, to obtain again tbe same results. 

Let us note, moreover, tbat it is tbe same witb 
tbese first emissions of voice and tbe motions tbat 
tbey produce tbat it is witb all tbe otber motions 
of tbe cbild : many of tbese motions are destined to 
disappear ; many of tbese sounds cannot be classed 
in any buman language, and tbey will never be 
utilized in tbe language tbat be will finally speak. 
Tbe cbild, as a matter of fact, tries bis vocal organs 
in every possible way and at random, so tbat be 
often invents queer untranslatable sounds wbicb it 
would be impossible to represent by tbe ordinary 
letters of tbe alphabet.* 

2. In a second period, tbe vocal manifestations 
tbat bave been at first only spontaneous and auto- 
matic actions, become quite promptly reflex actions, 
determined by acoustic impressions. Before tbe 
age, even, wben be will b6 able to repeat words, 
wben be will bear more and more distinctly, tbe 

* The mobility of the tongue is very great in the child. " The 
tongue is unquestionably the child's favourite plaything. One 
might almost speak of a lingual delirium in his case, as in that of 
the insane, when he pours forth all sorts of disconnected utter- 
ances, articulate and inarticulate, in confusion." (Development 
of the Intellect, p. 134.) 



LEARNING TO SPEAK Y7 

child is impelled by a sort of imitative impulse to 
cry, to emit sounds ; lie is instigated, so to speak, by 
the noise that strikes his hearing more or less con- 
fusedly; and it is as though in response to those 
who speak to him, that he most willingly makes 
his prattle heard.* This disposition will last until 
he is able to pronounce several words. At fifteen 
months, Marcel, started off by a few words that I 
had addressed to him, replies to me in an un- 
intelligible language ; then he is silent, looking 
at me with a very serious air. When I begin to 
talk to him again, he resumes his chattering. His 
brother, a little older, is in the next room, and calls 
to him ; Marcel answers, and for a few minutes it 
is an interrupted alternation of words and clearly 
articulated sentences on the one hand, and little 
confused cries on the other, f 

Long before the child knows how to talk we 
might say that he has, as it were, a premonition of 
dialogue, and that by sympathy, by social instinct, 
he feels a cecret need of conversing, of exchanging 
words, as far as he can, with the people about him. 
Speech calls forth speech, or at least if not speech, 
certain expressive manifestations. Do not birds in 

* We have seen, in the history of the smile, that we had to 
distinguish between the spontaneous smile and that which is only 
a response to the smile of others. 

f These observations do not contradict the statements of the 
psychologists who declare that the first language of the child is a 
monologue. Pollock finds only at twenty months the first effort 
at holding a conversation. It is only in a second period, but a 
little earlier, we believe, than Pollock has found it, that participa- 
tion in dialogue appears. 
8 



78 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

a cage "begin to chirp, to sing, as soon as they hear us 
speak near them, as though they wanted to enter 
into a conversation with us ? 

3. Up to this point, whether of his own accord 
or at the instigation of others, the child has let us 
hear only sounds to which he himself attaches no 
meaning, even if they have any for others. Lan- 
guage — by which we mean intercourse, an intel- 
ligent exchange of emotions and of ideas, a con- 
scious communication between two thoughts — real 
language has not yet begun. In order that it may 
begin, it is necessary that the child, whatever may 
be the insufficiency of his means of expression, shall 
wish, no matter how, to say, or at least to signify, 
something. And to us there seems no doubt that 
this expressive intention shows itself very early. 
The cries, the indistinct sounds, the first efforts at 
articulation, hasten to become something more than 
automatic or reflex phenomena ; they become real 
signs that the child employs to express what he 
feels and what he wants. 

It is, moreover, necessary — and here we distin- 
guish the third period — that the child, before giv- 
ing a meaning to the sounds that he utters himself, 
shall have been able to guess at, to interpret the 
meaning of the sounds that he hears.* In other 
words, he must comprehend the speech of others 
before he can comprehend his own. He shows this 
in obeying what is said to him. 

*" Infants learn the signification of many articulate sounds 
long before they begin themselves to utter them." (Romanes, 
Mental Evolution in Man, p. 123.) All the observers of the child 
seem to be of the same opinion. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 79 

The relation of the sign to the thing it signifies 
appears for the first time to his mind, not in what 
he says, but in what is said to him. So, according 
to certain observations, the passage from one of 
those stages to the other in the evolution of lan- 
guage would be slow and most laborious. ' Preyer 
states that up to the eighteenth month his son re- 
mained, on this point, in a purely receptive state. 
He was from the tenth or the twelfth month* capable 
of distinguishing the words that he heard, of inter- 
preting them and of understanding them, of turning 
around when his name was called, of obeying, not 
without gropings and mistakes,! such orders as 
these : " Give me your hand ! " " Show me the little 
rogue ! " But the same child, for more than six 
months after this, was incapable of reciprocating ; 
that is to say, he did not know how to employ any 
expressive medium to signify his needs and his 
desires to his parents. ;|: 

It seems to us that in the observations just re- 
ported there is only an exceptional case of indi- 
vidual slowness in the acquisition of language. * 
Usually things move with greater haste, and signs 
— at least intentional gestures — if not words as yet, 
are expressed as early as the first year. The only 

* Darwin also places the evident comprehension of words and 
phrases between the tenth and the twelfth month. 

f Development of the Intellect, p. 9. The child answered the 
question, " How tallf" by joining his hands together, a movement 
that he had learned to make in expressing an entreaty. 

X Ibid., p. 122. 

* Preyer frankly acknowledged the fact that his son was slow 
in this respect. 



80 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

establisTied fact in this connection, however, is that 
the understanding of signs always precedes the em- 
ployment of signs. 

In this the child does not surpass the animal. 
The dog understands the calls of his master. It is 
true that he has probably come to this only under 
the influence of long domestication and by conse- 
quence of his constant contact with man. Even 
the evolutionists recognise the fact that the psycho- 
logical transformation of the dog is the work of 
society and of human education.* 

We must distinguish several stages in this com- 
prehension of signs. The interpretation of ges- 
tures — of a threatening gesture, for instance — which 
the dog understands as well as the child, is one 
thing, the comprehension of words is another. It 
has not been proved that the dog understands the 
word whip ; but raise the whip threateningly, and 
he will immediately try to escape it. The compre- 
hension of the word itself and of the intonation that 
accompanies it is another thing. The first, Ro- 
manes says, represents a stage of mental evolution 
much higher than the second, f It is a question 
whether animals ever understand words as words, 
independent of intonations ; % but the child certainly 

* Romanes, Animal Intelligence, p. 437. 

f Mental Evolution in Man, p. 123. 

X Romanes does not hesitate to place himself on the affirma- 
tive, and he concludes that if animals were capable of articulating 
they would use simple words to express simple ideas. They would 
not need higher psychical faculties to say the word " Come " than 
to pull the dress or the coat of their master or their mistress, as 
they do ; or to pronounce the word " Open," instead of crying in a 
particular way behind a closed door. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 81 

comes to this towards the end of the first or the be- 
ginning of the second year. 

4. We come now to the fourth period — that in 
which the child shows his intelligence, not only in 
the interpretation of the sign that he perceives, as 
before, but also in the employment of the sign that 
he utters. To be sure, before the words themselves 
serve to signify the desires, the emotions, the ideas 
of the child, gestures will be employed for this use. 
The sign language prepares the way for the lan- 
guage of speech;* and when the child makes a 
sign of negation with his head, when he indicates 
with his hand the object that he wants us to give 
him, he is already trying to express what he wants 
or what he does not want. ^^ The inner impressions 
of very young children,^^ says an observer cited by 
Romanes, " are translated by a few sounds, but by 
a great variety of gestures and of facial expres- 
sions. The gestures of a child are intelligent long 
before he speaks." This is true, if we remember 
that before he is intelligent, before experience has 
established a relation between such and such a sign 
and such and such a sound, the child^s gestures have 
been automatic or instinctive, or at least lacking in 
the signification that they will have later. It is 
evident, moreover, that the transformation of the 
natural gestures of the child into intelligent signs 
is much easier than the same operation will be 
when it is a question of giving meaning to articu- 

* " The origin and development of speech must have been 
greatly assisted by gesture. . . . Gesture psychologically precedes 
speech." (Romanes, op. cit., p. 152.) 



82 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

lations pronounced at first witliont intention. Ges- 
tures are almost always, so to speak, the fore- 
sliortenings of tlie spontaneous movements which. 
Nature has in the beginning suggested to the child. 
We have seen this in the case of the kiss ; * so the 
nodding of the head to say No, only a remembrance 
of the act Of turning aside to avoid a danger, or 
simply the sight of what offends the eye ; f the 
hand extended to designate an object that one 
wants, to ask for it, is precisely the movement that 
it would be necessary to make in order to take it 
oneself. 

The association that gives a meaning not merely 
to gestures, but to articulations and words, is in- 
finitely more difficult to establish. We shall see 
immediately how far it may be considered as in- 
stinctive, as resulting from the child's spontaneity. 
For the large majority of words, however, if not 
for all those that compose the child's vocabulary, 
it is experience, I mean hearing the word pro- 
nounced several times in presence of the object 
that the word designates, which alone can cause 
the child to use, in his turn, the same word with 
the same meaning. The child has heard words for 
several months without understanding them; he 
understands them several months before he can 
repeat them and pronounce them himself. "Every 
mother, says Preyer, "loses many thousands of 

* Vol. i, p. 177. 

f We do not say that these signs are not learned in part. 
Romanes says : " My son learned from his nurse to shake his head 
for ' No,' to make a sign of acquiescence for ' Yes,' to wave his 
hand for ' Grood-bye,' and this at eight months and a half." 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 83 

words tliat she speaks, whispers, or sings to her 
child, without the child^s hearing a single one of 
them, and she says many thousand words to him 
before he understands one. But if she did not do 
it, the child would learn to speak much later and 
with much more difficulty." * 

It is often, in order to accompany his gestures, 
that the child first uses his voice intentionally. 
Tiedemann says that his son, at nine months, 
pointed with his finger to make them notice the 
objects that struck his eye, and that at the same 
time he exclaimed, " Ah ! ah ! " And Tiedemann 
adds, " What proves that his gesture as well as his 
cry is addressed to others, is, that he is satisfied as 
soon as we show him that we have noticed the same 
object." Preyer himself reports facts that seem to 
contradict his own conclusions : at eleven months 
his son always uttered the same sound, atta, attai, 
when he saw that an object had disappeared, that 
a person had gone from the room, or that a light 
was being brought in. At nine months his voice 
undoubtedly indicated a desire, and when he asked 
for a new object he uttered the same cries that he 
was in the habit of producing before taking his 
nourishment. At the same age he accompanied 
the voluntary motions that he made with his hands 
and his arms, to seize or to hold an object, with a 
little cry, always the same. 

In these beginnings of language the gesture 
often comes to aid the still imperfect speech. A 
child of fifteen months who had learned to raise his 

* The Senses and the Will, p. 96. 



84: LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

hands when asked " How large is the baby ? " did 
not have enough suppleness of articulation to pro- 
nounce the word grand (large) ; and when urged to 
say Grand maman, he settled the matter by raising 
his hands in the air and adding Maman. ^ Later, 
when the intellectual evolution is ended, gestures 
will be relegated to the second place, and will pre- 
sent themselves only as an auxiliary of speech; 
with the child, on the contrary, it seems that the 
beginnings of speech accompany the gesture, the 
latter being as yet the principal element of lan- 
guage. 

The child, then, learns little by little to pro- 
nounce, to repeat, finally to interpret words. It is 
evident that in the intellectual work, by which he 
will be enabled to put a meaning into every sign, 
the child needs assistance. There are, however, 
many words in his vocabulary towards the end of 
the second or the third year that have never been 
taught him, that he has appropriated by himself. 
Preyer says that at twenty-one months Axel knew 
a great many words that no one had taught him, 
such as "whip/^ " stick,^^ "match," "pen.^f The 
child learns to speak in two ways : in one, the idea 
has grown in his mind at the suggestion of some 
perception or other ; and it is to this idea that he 
attaches a word, often caught on the wing, as it were ; 
in the other, the word precedes the idea ; this word 
has been heard and retained, but it is only little by 

* Compare Egger, p. 41. "In the beginning articulate lan- 
guage is very sparse and inadequate, and gestures have to be added 
constantly in order to make it intelligible." 

f The Development of the Intellect, p. 142, 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 85 

little, and after many gropings, that the child ap- 
plies a meaning to it. It is by its own force that 
the intelligence — thanks to the power of the memory 
for words, thanks to a persevering attention, often 
witnessed by the meditative attitude of the child 
when he hears people talk — guesses the meaning of 
a great many words. This is the more remarkable, 
too, in that the child often comes to it even before 
he is in a state to repeat the words, or when he 
repeats them in a purely rudimentary way. 

The progress of language could not be repre- 
sented by a straight and continuous line ; it would 
need a broken line, returning sometimes on itself 
and then going on again. Even at the age when 
the child, by dint of many efforts, can articulate 
distinctly, we see the inarticulate sounds reappear- 
ing; in the same way, the unconscious prattling 
when he can already say a few intelligent words ; 
the monologue when he can carry on a dialogue to a 
certain extent ; and still the incapacity to repeat or 
to understand certain words when he has imitated 
and interpreted more difficult ones. All is tangled 
and confused in the child's progress in acquiring 
the language. The different faculties interested do 
not progress at the same pace. For instance, the 
material mechanism of speech may still be very 
imperfect when the intelligence has advanced to 
a state of appreciating many words. 

Ill 

It is an interesting argument, and one that con- 
tains a great deal of truth, by which philosophers 
claim that the child is not merely a parrot repeat- 



86 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

ing the words that lie hears ; that in the acquisition 
of language he does not proceed exclusively by imi- 
tation, by " echolalia/' as the Germans say ; * that 
he shows a certain initiative in the invention of the 
first words that he uses ; and finally, that before 
borrowing the language of his parents, he has, to a 
certain extent, a language of his own. 

It is hardly necessary to say how important a 
demonstration of this sort would be for the phi- 
losophy of language. If it were shown that the 
child is capable, to any extent whatever, of finding 
by himself the verbal expression of his thoughts 
and of his feelings, there would be no longer any 
motive for holding that it has been otherwise with 
the origin of humanity. The work of invention, 
which every little child shows us, would be only 
the image, the distant and weakened remembrance, 
of the primitive evolution that has created the lan- 
guage. The two theories — credited turn by turn, 
one of which represents the language of speech 
as a miracle of divine revelation, the other as an 
artificial creation of reflective reason — would be 
equally contradicted. The solution of this ques- 
tion is not the only service, but it is one of the most 
important services, that the psychology of the 
child can render to the philosophy of the human 
mind. 

It is to French philosophers — to Rousseau, to 
Maine de Biran, to Albert Lemoine — that we must 
give the honour of having first divined or estab- 

* " Echolalia," properly speaking, consists, chiefly, in the repe- 
tition of the last syllable of words heard. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 87 

lislied the spontaneity of the child in the matter of 
language. It is French writers also that have cor- 
roborated the opinion of their forerunners by exact 
observations. 

As early as 1753 Rousseau wrote : " The child hav- 
ing all his needs to explain, and consequently more 
things to say to the mother than she has to say to 
him, it is he who ought to resort most to invention, 
and the language that he uses ought to be in great 
part his own work."' * Rousseau trusted to a some- 
what doubtful argument, and from it deduced a 
conjecture which by chance is in accord with the 
facts. He held, moreover, to his conclusion, and 
he returns to it in Emile, where he says : " Chil- 
dren will give you their words before receiving 
yours.^^ 

Maine de Biran went no further than a priori 
conjectures. He said : " Before hearing the first 
articulate sounds transmitted by his nurse, the 
child must have uttered some sounds voluntarily, 
and must have perceived that he was heard by 
others, as he heard himself; and it is only after 
having been heard by himself, or after having 
voluntarily repeated the first cries which instinct 
drew from him at birth, that he also becomes capa- 
ble of repeating or of imitating voluntarily the 
first articulate sounds that he receives from with- 
out. We thus see how language can begin in a 
family or in a small society. Each child born in 
this human family has his primitive language, 
which he understands, and which is understood and 

* Discours sur I'origine de I'inegalite parmi les hommes. 



88 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

repeated by parents, whose voice or inflections the 
child in his turn will soon imitate." * 

Very different, on this question, is the method 
of contemporaneous psychologists, who appeal, not 
to hypotheses, but to observation and to facts. In 
1865, in his ingenious essay, De la physionomie et 
de la parole, A.lbert Lemoine set forth very clearly, 
although under a too general form and not without 
some exaggeration, the creative part of the child in 
forming language. "Nobody,'^ he said, "can tell, 
as if returning from a voyage to Eden, how man 
spoke for the first time ; but we can observe every 
day how a man begins to talk. The child does 
much more than we think for the language that is 
taught him ; he is half-way an inventor, while we 
believe that we give him the language complete. 
See him when the organ of speech, still perplexed, 
does not obey his weak will ; already, however, he 
is capable of modulating a few vowels and of 
articulating a few consonants, which the badly 
regulated movements of his lips and of his tongue 
form by chance. He is at that critical and charming 
moment when he is about to enter into possession 
of the government of his organs, and to show his 
little passions by other signs than by cries. You 
believe that it is really his mother who teaches him 
the first articulate sound, the first word having a 
meaning ; but undeceive yourself ; it is the child 
that gives the first lesson, the mother that receives 
it. The first word that he pronounces and to which 

* Maine de Biran, Examen critique des opinions de M. de 
Bonald, in (Euvres inedites, vol. iii, p. 259. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 89 

he attaclies a meaning is not a word of tlie motlier- 
tongue that he gets from his nurse ; he is the one 
that makes the shapeless material into a word ; he 
attaches a meaning to it ; it is a word of his lan- 
guage to him, and his nurse learns this language 
from him before teaching him hers. This language 
of the child, with a vocabulary of only a few sounds, 
of modulated cries, of monosyllables hardly articu- 
lated, which dispenses with grammar, is the instru- 
ment that the mother will use to make him under- 
stand the artificial language of his country and his 
time/' * 

In 1871 Emile Egger, in a memoir read at the 
Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, and in 
1876 Taine, in an article in the Revue philosophique, 
revived the same argument, founded on their per- 
sonal experiences : " There is not a single one of his 
needs for which the child that I am observing does 
not invent one or more articulate sounds without 
any voluntary or involuntary example being given 
him. The intellectual work of the child is very 
active, and his language follows this work with a 
facility of invention that sometimes perplexes our 
wisest attention." (Egger.) " Originality, inven- 
tion, is so active in the child that if he learns 
our language from us, we learn his from him." 
(Taine). 

Let us now resort to facts in order to determine 
exactly how far it is true to say that the child in- 
vents his own language. We shall distinguish three 

* Albert Lemoine, De la physionomie et de la parole, G. Bail- 
Here, 1865, p. 148. 



90 LATER INFANCY OP THE CHILD 

series of cases in wliicli tlie child^s spontaneity of 
expression is more or less revealed. 

1st. The child produces the sound or the word 
hy himself, but it is the parents who give a mean- 
ing to the syllables that he has articulated without 
really intending to do so. 

2d. The child at the same time invents the word 
and fixes the meaning of it: this is the most cu- 
rious, the rarest, and also the most controverted 
case. 

3d. Finally, in other cases, and very frequently, 
the parents furnish the words, and the child, who 
repeats them, interprets them in his own way and 
employs them with new meanings. 

In other words, allowing that language includes 
two essential elements, a material sign A, an intel- 
lectual signification B, the child sometimes invents 
only A ; sometimes finds at once A and B ; some- 
times A being suggested, he imagines B. 

1st. From the first months, as we have seen, the 
child is capable of emitting various sounds. These 
sounds can be distinguished sometimes in the midst 
of his cries. On the sixty-fourth day, Preyer tells 
us, the syllable ma was heard while the child was 
crying. At other times, and more and more in pro- 
portion as he grows, in his moments of calm or of 
comfort, the child gives himself up to this chatter- 
ing, this bird-chirping that we have already de- 
scribed. At first it is only a succession of indis- 
tinct sounds, from which is detached, as by chance, 
a distinct syllable. On the forty-third day, Preyer 
heard the first consonant pronounced. The child 
was lying comfortably, and uttering sounds of every 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 91 

sort, impossible to fix, but lie said clearly am-ma* 
Later, there are real monologues, in which the child 
prolongs indefinitely the emission of vocal sounds, 
to which he attaches absolutely no meaning. He 
seems to amuse himself with his own voice; he 
takes pleasure in exercising the organs of speech, 
just as he loves to move his arms and his legs. " We 
think that he talks," says Droz ; " he simply makes 
music.^" All this indefinite flow of articulate sylla- 
bles which he repeats, and which he varies with an 
inexhaustible facility, all this is only noise ; purely 
automatic motions which the child has no idea of 
making use of, which have no value as signs, and in 
which there is mingled not the least bit of thought 
or of voluntary expression. 

Still, these elementary sounds, of which it is dif- 
ficult to determine the order of succession, could 
not be considered as the simple repetition of sounds 
heard by the child. Of course there could be no 
question of a voluntary imitation, which will not 
be produced until much later ; Preyer says that he 
did not observe a single instance of it until the 
eleventh month, f But it does not seem that volun- 

* The Development of the Intellect, p. 102. 

f Darwin, it is true, believes that he recognised, from the hun- 
dred and eighteenth day, that his child was beginning to try to 
imitate sounds. But Romanes states categorically that the first 
articulations of the child do not result from imitation. " Infants 
usually begin with such syllables as ' alia,' ' tata,' ' mama ' and 
*papa' (with or without reduplication) before they understand 
the meaning of any word. One of my own children could say all 
these syllables very distinctly at the age of eight months and a 
half, and I could detect no evidence at that time of his under- 



92 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

tary imitation, whose importance we do not wisL. to 
deny, could suffice to explain the emission of these 
first sounds, as the voice explains the echo. Doubt- 
less all is not spontaneous in these first stammerings ; 
a syllable that the child has heard more distinctly, 
which is frequently pronounced around him, has 
every chance of being mechanically reproduced and 
of becoming one of the preferred utterances. The 
vocal spontaneity of the child is none the less in- 
controvertible. We could not fail to see that his 
cries have a different character according as they re- 
sult from one feeling or from another. " After some 
time," says Darwin, "the nature of cries changes, 
according as they are produced by hunger or by 
other suffering." Moreover, there can be no doubt 
that the child's voice has its favourite, and, so to 
speak, its privileged articulations. * At the age of 
five months and a half, Doddy formed the articulate 
sound da, but without attaching any meaning to 
it. " From the forty-second week on," says Preyer, 
"especially the syllables ma, pappa, appapa, bahha, 
tata, are frequently uttered." Note, moreover, that 

standing words or of his having learned these syllabic utterances 
by imitation. Another child of mine, which was very long in be- 
ginning to speak, at fourteen and a half months old, said once» 
and only once, but very distinctly, ' Ego.' This was certainly not 
said in imitation of any one having uttered the word in her pres- 
ence, and therefore I mention the incident to show that meaning- 
less articulation in young children is spontaneous or instinctive." 
(Mental Evolution in Man, p. 122.) 

* Albert Lemoine is wrong in believing that the • linguistic 
spontaneity would vary sensibly from family to family, from child 
to child. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 93 

the efforts made at the same time to induce the 
child to repeat syllables pronounced before him fail 
utterly. Preyer notes also the sounds tai, atai as 
"undoubtedly spontaneous.'^ 

In other words, the child finds, at least in part, 
the material for his language in a sort of natural 
inspiration. Is it by virtue of the law of the least 
effort, as Buffon thought,* that he emits certain 
sounds rather than others ? Is it because of an in- 
nate and hereditary tendency ? \ Whatever the 
reason, it makes little difference. The explanation 
of the fact remains doubtful ; but the fact itself is 
assured. If papa and mamma are with slight varia- 
tions the child's names for father and mother, in so 
many different languages, it is because the syllables 
that compose these two words are precisely those 
that the child has most inclination to utter instinc- 
tively. How does this happen ? On the one hand, 
the child in his intelligence, in his imagination, 
rather, has vaguely conceived the idea of his father 
and of his mother, an idea purely representative, 
which is no more than an image, the remembrance 
of the material forms that characterize each of his 
parents and of the impression that their actions 
have left in his mind. On the other hand, he 
repeats very often, but without putting any ex- 
pressive intention into them, the syllables that are 

* Buffon, CEuvres completes, Paris, 1878, vol. iv, p. 68. Buffon 
believed, moreover, that the child owes his language to his mother. 

f Preyer (Development of the Intellect, p. 217) suggests that 
the order of the evolution of vocal sounds depends on the power 
of the brain, on the teeth, on the dimensions of the tongue, the 
acuteness of hearing, etc. 
9 



94 LATER INFANCY OP THE CHILD 

destined to become the verbal signs of these ideas 
and these images. Now it is necessary that these 
two evolutions, parallel but distinct and independ- 
ent, should be joined and mingled. It is the 
mother or the father who will make sure the 
transition, who, taking from the lips of his son 
the word all formed, but without life, will repeat 
it insistently before him in the right connection, 
before the person he is to designate, and who, sug- 
gesting thus little by little the relation, the asso- 
ciation that he is to be made to learn, will give to 
the sound all the value of a sign. "Papa," says 
Taine, " has been pronounced more than fifteen days, 
without intention, without meaning, as a simple 
prattling, as an easy and amusing articulation. It 
is later that the association between the name and 
the image or the perception of the object is made 
definite, that the image or the perception of the 
father calls to his lips the sound papa, and that 
this sound pronounced by another definitely and 
regularly calls up the remembrance, the image, the 
expectation, the seeking for the father.'' 

2d. If it is established, as we believe it is with 
the majority of psychologists, that the child him- 
self puts into circulation, as it were, that he invents 
and repeats certain words, to which the traditions 
of the mother tongue must give a meaning, the 
meaning immemorially agreed upon, it is much 
more difficult to show that he can accomplish this 
double operation by himself— that is to say, make a 
complete work of creation in point of language, by 
inventing words to which he himself givesa mean- 
ing. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 95 

Taine is very positive on this point, but the ex- 
amples that he cites, apart from the fact that they 
are not numerous, could not be admitted without 
question. In the fourteenth month the child that 
he observed pronounced invariably the word " ham " 
in the presence of nourishment ; * later, this articu- 
lation was reproduced whenever the child was 
hungry or thirsty. Taine explains very ingeniously 
that this " ham'' is the natural vocal movement of 
one who snaps up anything. "The sound begins 
with an aspirate guttural, then follows a barking, 
and the syllable ends with the closing of the lips, 
executed as though the food was about to be seized 
and devoured. A man would probably follow this 
plan if, among savages, his hands bound, and having 
no other way to express himself than by his vocal 
organs, he wished to say that he would like some- 
thing to eat.'' For Taine's supposition to be really 
established, it would be necessary, it seems to us, 
that this "natural vocal movement" should be 
found in all children. But this is not so. A child 
that we observed said nana in the same sense. 
Doddy, when a year old, tried to invent a word to 
designate his food, and called it mum, " But I do 
not know," prudently adds Darwin, "what led him 
to adopt this syllable." f At twenty-one months, to 

* On this point ray personal observations are contradictory; 
one of my sons said am of his own accord when he was hungry 
or thirsty. And note that I had not read Taine at this time. 
Another, on the contrary, between the eighteenth and the twenty- 
fourth month did not show any originality in his language ; he 
had no word of his own, except words that he had mutilated. 

f Preyer observed an analogous word with his son ; he said 



96 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

designate food. Axel often said, with a supplicating, 
untranslatable intonation, mimi. Does it not seem 
that this variety of sounds used by the child may 
be the result of the fact that there is here only a 
mutilation, a deformation, of words that the child 
has heard and arranges in his own way, rather than 
a really new formation ? It is in great part because 
he cripples his words, because he repeats awkwardly 
the words that are suggested to him, that the child 
seems to have his own particular language. More- 
over, he is encouraged and upheld in the use of his 
childish idioms by the way parents and nurses have 
of pleasing, of flattering, so to speak, his quasi- 
philological vanity, in adopting and repeating after 
him these disfigured words. It is, then, from the 
weakness of his organs, from the uncertainties of 
an articulation ill-assured, of bungling imitations, 
rather than from a real inventive originality, that 
the creations too favourably interpreted by Taine 
might result. Thus liam could well be only an 
abbreviation of manger (to eat) ; * or, as Preyer 
suggests, the echo of faim, as-tu faim 9 (hungry — 
are you hungry ?) So mimi, pronounced by Axel, 
might be only an imitation of the German word 

momm when he was hungry, and that from the sixteenth week. A 
child observed by Fritz Schultze, of Dresden, said mam, mam, in 
the same sense. Preyer supposes that this word comes from the 
primitive syllable ma, and that the child uses it because he has 
often heard " mamma " when nursing. 

* We must notice, in any case, that the infant, to speak prop- 
erly, does not eat or snap up things, as Taine supposes, but that he 
sucks; and that the noise that may be made in eating — ham, per- 
haps — does not in the least resemble that made in sucking. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 97 

milch (milk). A fact tending to confirm this sup- 
position is the use that Doddy made of his mum ; 
when he applied it to sugar, he said " Shu mum," 
and a little later, to designate liquorice, he said, 
" Black shu-mum." The two other words were de- 
rived by imitation ; it is logical to suppose that the 
first has the same origin. It is the same thing with 
another word that the child observed by Taine re- 
peated frequently — the word tern., to mean give, take, 
here, or look. Taine himself points out that there 
might be here only a derivation from the word 
tiens (hold), which the child had often heard pro- 
nounced with an analogous meaning. 

We cannot deny that the child's verbal imita- 
tion is no longer what it may have been, what it 
must have been, in the case of primitive man. It 
is not, as in the beginning, called forth by the need, 
by the necessity, of finding, unaided, the signs 
necessary to entering into relation with other men.* 
The inventive faculties are reduced almost to inac- 
tion by the teaching of a language all formed, which 
sounds in the child's ears from the time of his birth, 
and also by the complacency of nurses, who, in 
order to help him acquire the language, choose the 
easiest sounds, those most appropriate to his imper- 
fect organs. An observer among our friends tells 
us of a child who designated one of the most fre- 

* Romanes calls attention to the fact that there is a great dif- 
ference between the psychological conditions in little children and 
in primitive man. The child has language supplied from without, 
and has only to learn it ; primitive man did not receive language, 
but had to make it. (Mental Evolution in Man, p. 365.) 



98 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

quent needs at this time by a little whistling, re- 
peated, zi-si. But he had not invented this sign ; 
he got it from his nurse, who had doubtless found 
some analogy between the thing and the sound. 

Is it necessary to admit also Preyer's absolute 
conclusion, that a child never invents a word of 
determinate and precise meaning without falling 
back upon the imitation of the sounds that he 
hears, and that he never employs elementary words 
to express his ideas without his parents having 
had some part in the work ? * Surely we can- 
not think of holding that any child comes into 
the world with a genius sufficient to discover ar- 
ticulate language; but however large a part it is 
necessary to assign, either to imitated sounds in 
the special words of the child's vocabulary, or to 
the suggestion of parents in the significative appli- 
cation of these words, it seems to us by no means 
demonstrated that the child has not some rights of 
the inventor to claim, whether in the way that he 
arranges — if only in deforming them — the materials 
that are furnished him, or, above all, in giving 
by himself some definite meaning to an articula- 
tion previously employed without any expressive 
intention. This is really the whole question. The 
introduction of a meaning into a sound up to that 
moment insignificant and inexpressive, this is the 

* This is the opinion also of Mme. Necker de Saussure : " The 
child does not invent words by himself ; he only repeats, some- 
times well, sometimes ill, those that he has heard pronounced. He 
does not even call an animal by its cry, unless some one has given 
him an example to imitate." (Education Progressive, vol. ii, 
chap, ii.) 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 99 

very key to the acquisition of language. Is it 
proved that the child never makes his way here 
without the direction of his parents ? By no 
means. The intervention of parents is perhaps 
necessary for this delicate transition to be made the 
first time ; but when the first impulse has been 
given, there is no doubt but that the child is 
capable of fixing spontaneously, as he understands 
it, the meaning of words more or less original, 
more or less imitated, which he has used at first 
unconsciously. 

What there can be no question about, what 
Preyer himself admits, is that the child — still imita- 
ting it is true, but imitating spontaneously, the 
cries of animals — creates onomatopoeias, which im- 
mediately become for him the names of these ani- 
mals. In this case, the idea and the word come 
simultaneously to his mind and to his lips. The 
word hoiv-wow, which designates the dog, is doubt- 
less most often taught to the child by his nurse, 
who makes it her duty to teach him not only the 
official language, but also the little patois that be- 
longs to childhood. But who can say that the word 
is not also often invented by the child, when he hears 
frequently the barking of dogs ? Preyer cites as 
examples of instinctive onomatopoeia, koho, hiki- 
riki, pipiep (bird), tic-tac (watch), hii-iit (whistle of 
a locomotive).* 

Another fact that we cannot question is, that 



* At twenty months, Axel, seeing a redbreast in the garden, 
looked at it attentively, and tried several times, with some success 
to imitate its chirping. (The Development of the Intellect, p. 135.) 



100 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

interjections, wliich., it is true, form part of the 
child's natural language, and which are only articu- 
late cries, become very early the intentional expres- 
sion of such or such emotion. At fifteen months, 
Tiedemann's son said very clearly Ha I ha I to ex- 
press his astonishment. Tiedemann suggests that 
this ha is the natural sign of reflection, of surprise ; 
that it results from the sudden expulsion of the 
breath. Whatever may be the truth of this, it is cer- 
tainly true that the child animates, and, so to speak, 
intellectualizes his interjections — that is to say, he 
makes use of them as names, the sounds that nat- 
urally express his states of sensation and of emotion. 
If it were necessary to cite a decisive experience 
in order to establish the thesis of the spontaneity 
of expression in the human race, we might call to 
witness the education of Laura Bridgman, the blind 
woman that was also deaf and dumb, who died 
recently. According to the report of Dr. Howe, 
Laura had at her disposal to designate her friends 
and the persons she knew intimately, about fifty 
vocal signs, instinctive articulations — a burst of 
laughter for one, clucking for another, a nasal sound 
for a third, a guttural sound for a fourth. Can we 
not see here, with a force accentuated by the depri- 
vation of the senses, the expressive power that con- 
sists essentially in attributing a meaning to a vocal 
sign ? Here, indeed, there is no possibility of imi- 
tation, and it seems probable that if the child were 
not immediately stopped in his efforts at sponta- 
neous expression by being taught the traditional 
language, he would end by making a language for 
himself. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 101 

It is proved that when placed in exceptional 
and favourable circumstances, children show a more 
marked linguistic originality than is ordinarily 
found. Some one has told of twins who loved each 
other dearly and lived, so to speak, absorbed in 
each other. As a result of this society, they in- 
vented a particular language which had no relation 
to the language of their parents. They said neither 
*' papa '' nor " mamma,^' but had their own names for 
their mother, their father, the carriages that passed 
their door, and so on. They spoke to each other 
with the vivacity and the volubility commonly 
found at this age, but with a German accent (they 
were of German origin). They used only words 
that were incomprehensible to their parents.* An- 
other observation of the same kind is that of a 
little girl who, English by birth, but aided perhaps 
by the remembrance of some French words heard 
by chance, made up for herself a language that had 
an evident resemblance to the French language. 
In this language of hers there were almost no traces 
of words formed by the imitation of sounds. The 
'' mewing '' of a cat perhaps suggested the word mea, 
which signified both " cat '' and " fur." But no 
origin could be found to explain the other words 
that this child used. She had a brother, eighteen 
months younger, to whom she taught her language, 
so that they conversed freely together without being 
understood by any one around them.f 

* Horatio Hale, in the Proceedings of the American Associa- 
tion for the Advancement of Sciences, vol. xxxv, 1886. 
f Horatio Hale, op. cit. 



102 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

3d. Althongli very limited from the point of 
view that we have just been examining, the child^s 
inventive force takes its revenge when it is a ques- 
tion of extending, of generalizing, of varying the 
meaning of words that he takes ready-made from 
the language of his parents, or of those that he has 
made himself. Preyer recognised this : when once 
a first association has been established, by sugges- 
tion or instinctively, between a notion and a syllable, 
the child easily finds new associations by himself.* 

We cite a few examples out of a thousand. A 
child that was beginning to talk, says Romanes, 
quoting from Darwin, saw and heard a duck on the 
water, and said " Quack ! quack ! " From this mo- 
ment he employed indifferently the same word — 
" quack, quack " — to designate the water, all birds, 
all insects, all liquids, finally even pieces of money, 
because on a French sou he had noticed the image 
of an eagle. Another example: A German child 
twenty-one months old first used the interjection ai 
as a cry of joy; he modified it in aiz, in aze, and 
finally in ass, to designate his wooden goat mounted 
on wheels and covered with hair ; aiz was afterward 
reserved as a cry of joy, and ass, signified everything 
that could change its position — animals, his own 
sister, the carts, everything that moves, everything 
that has hair. Ban, in the vocabulary of an English 
child, meant ".soldier," but on seeing a bishop with 
his mitre and his priestly vestments, the child ap- 
plied this word to him. To the same child, gar odo 
signified "to go after the horse,'^ but when the 

* Preyer, Development of the Intellect, p. 215. 



LEAENING TO SPEAK 103 

father wanted a carriage and wrote an order for the 
servant that went to the stable, gar odo became a 
synonym for paper and pencil. " The first word 
that my son learned after papa and mamma," says 
Romanes, " was star ; he applied it afterward to 
all shining objects — candles, gas-burners, and so 
on." 

Notice also the interesting observations of Taine. 
A little girl of two and a half years wore a blessed 
medal around her neck. Some one had said to her 
" C'est le bon Dieu " (It is God) . One day, when seated 
on her uncle's knee, she took his eye-glass, saying, 
" This is my uncle's bo Du.'' The word fafer, coined 
by a little boy a year old to designate the railroad 
(chemin de fer), became the name for steamboats, 
for spirit coffee-pots, for all objects that whistle, 
that make a noise and throw out smoke. " Another 
instrument," adds Taine, " to which children have 
a great objection (excuse the detail and the word — 
I mean a clysopompe) had, naturally enough, made a 
strong impression on him. He had termed it, from 
its noise, a zizi. Till he was two years and a half 
old, all long, hollow, slender objects — a scissors- 
sheath, a cigar-tube, a trumpet — were for him zizi, 
and he treated them all with distrust." * 

All the words of the child's language, indeed, 
are thus bent to many uses by a need of expression 
which is not aided by a proportionate elocutionary 
power. " Papa " designates all men ; " mamma," all 
women. "Cola" (chocolate) is the name for all 
dainties, " koko " the name for all birds. 

* Taine, On Intelligence, Book I, chap. ii. 



104 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

These indiscreet crude generalizations doubtless 
result in the first place from the poverty of the 
child's language. The child is like a person who, 
not having many dishes, eats all the courses of a 
dinner on one plate; he forces several meanings 
into one and the same word. We might find many 
analogous examples in the imperfect language of 
primitive peoples; thus, the Romans called ele- 
phants " Lucanian bulls.^' * 

But it is not only reasons of economy, and of 
forced economy, that direct the child ; if he makes 
words of one meaning answer for another, it is be- 
cause he has a particular aptitude for grasping re- 
lations between things that escape even the niceties 
of the intelligence of a mature man, a marked pro- 
pensity to generalize ; thus, he contents himself with 
comparisons which the reason of a man would dis- 
card immediately. Chance associations, accidental 
and superficial associations, rule, as we have seen, 
in the child's imagination. 

From the facts that we have cited, we see that 
the child gives proof of a certain spontaneity in 
the preparation of the language of speech ; but not 
that, if thrown on his own strength alone, he would 
be in a state to invent an entire language for him- 
self. The fact that deaf-mutes do not speak, and 
this because they do not hear, sufiices to disprove 
the thesis of the absolute lingual spontaneity in 
man, and to show the considerable part of imita- 
tion. It is well, however, to call attention to the 
fact that the incapacity of the deaf-mute does not 

* Egger, op. cit., p. 45. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 105 

result only from liis not hearing the speech of 
others, the cries of animals, and all other sounds 
of Nature without ; it results also from his not be- 
ing able to^hear himself because the articulations 
which he can pronounce do not strike his ears. If 
the normal child comes to separate spontaneously a 
few intelligent words from his natural chattering, 
to make the sounds that instinct or heredity has 
placed on his lips mean something, it is because he 
can hear them, and having heard them, can use 
them to express this or that. 

It is none the less true that in the social condi- 
tions in which the child is called to live from the 
time of his birth, imitation of the language of 
others plays the largest part ; experience is almost 
sovereign. Instinct, heredity, personal invention, 
have only a very restricted action. The child's 
effort to repeat the syllables pronounced before 
him is never shown until towards the tenth or the 
twelfth month, but it is just then that he begins to 
speak.''' Even those who believe most in the activ- 
ity of the child recognise the fact that this activity 
is aided by a natural tendency to reproduce the 
sounds of Nature, to imitate the cries of animals. 
Onomatopoeia is only imitation. Moreover, if it is 
in the child's power to translate in his own way the 
sounds that he hears, to imitate, for instance, the 
noise that a clock makes when being wound, why 
should he not be led to imitate the artificial sounds 

* Preyer says that in the eleventh month certain syllables that 
were pronounced before the_ child were for the first time repeated 
by him. 



106 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

of the conventional language which is being spoken 
constantly in his ears ? 

This instinct of imitation is so strong that long 
before he is capable of forming difficult articula- 
tions involved in the pronunciation of ordinary 
words, the child tries to do it. He imitates, in a 
way, before he really can imitate.* The first words 
that he uses witness at once his voluntary effort 
and his weakness. Different observers have noted 
the child's efforts in this direction from day to 
day.f "At twenty-two months, a child observed 
by De la Calle said cou for clou (a nail), otta for 
ote toi (be off), clouts for croute (crust), anoir for 
armoire (cupboard), moussoir for mouchoir (hand- 
kerchief), faguegue for fatigue (tired), la-lo for 
la-haut (up there), gouazelle for mademoiselle, ac 
quelocque for enveloppe, peterre for pom,me de 
terre (potato), and so on. The same defects of 
articulation are found in all children. At eight- 
een months the child studied by Pollock does not 
pronounce g I r, nor the sibilants, nor the aspi- 

* The child hears us say confiture (preserves), armoire (cup- 
board) ; perhaps he has already pronounced a thousand times the 
syllables that form these words, but the act of pronouncing them 
has not come under the reign of his will. He wishes to repro- 
duce them but cannot " (Egger, op. cit,, p. 201). Preyer says that 
he took a great deal of trouble to get his child (eleven months old) 
to repeat vowels and syllables, but that he never succeeded in 
these efforts. If he said " papa " very distinctly, the child re- 
sponded "ta-tai." (The Development of the Intellect, p. 117.) 

f See, for instance, in Mind, vol. iii, 1878, p. 892 et seg. ; the 
studies of Pollock on the Progress of a Child in Language ; De la 
Calle, La Glossologie, Paris, 1881; also Schultze, Die Sprache des 
Kindes, Leipsic, 1880. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 107 

rates. The pronunciation of the consonant r is 
particularly difficult for the child. The weakness 
of his organs shows itself in the fact that for 
some time his language does not go beyond the 
monosyllabic forms. His dissyllables^ papa, mam- 
ma, are formed only by the repetition of the same 
sounds. In the words composed of two different 
syllables, he retains only one. A little girl whose 
progress was noted by Perez, towards the twenty- 
second month could say only hou for tambour 
(drum), fe for cafe (coffee), ye for Pierre. A little 
while afterward the same child went so far as to 
pronounce ahou for tambour , ateau for gateau 
(cake).^'* 

We should never end if we tried to note all 
the changes that the child's inexperienced tongue 
makes the words that he repeats undergo. More- 
over, it is not by chance that the child produces 
these mutilations, which result from the play of the 
organs, from the articulatory apparatus, from its 
still difficult action, more than from an imperfec- 
tion of the acoustic faculties. Philologists like to 
show that natural laws preside over the apparent 
disorder of these crippled words and awkward ar- 
ticulations. The clumsiness of the childish lan- 
guage corresponds to analogous phenomena found 
in the history of languages. Egger, for instance, 
calls our attention to the fact that the child will say 
crop for trop (too much) ; cravailler for travailler 
(to work) ; so from the Latin temere has come the 
French verb craindre (to fear). " The ancient 

* Perez, op. cit., p. 297. 



108 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

Egyptians," he says further, " seem not to have 
distinguished clearly the letter I from the letter r ; 
and the Chinese refuse absolutely to pronounce the 
latter. This strange phenomenon is often repro- 
duced under our very eyes, in Europe. Some of 
our children often interchange these two conso- 
nants, and close attention is necessary on the part 
of parents and masters to make them pronounce I 
and r only where the traditions of the language 
have established them." * 

However natural the language of speech may 
be, it is evident that only the work of time has suc- 
ceeded in organizing a complete language. It is 
not surprising, therefore, that the child has trouble 
in learning the language of his parents, and that in 
his individual evolution of a few years it is difficult 
for him to appropriate the result of an evolution 
that has lasted for centuries. The child actually 
learns to speak ; on this point more than on any 
other, it is necessary that the teaching of the lan- 
guage should perfect what by himself he is only 
rough-sketching. The child is a pupil long before 
he goes to sit on a school bench; he is a pupil 
studying language from the first minute of his 
existence. What he brings from within himself is 

* Egger, op. cit., p. 49. Schultze, in calling attention to the 
fact that labials and Unguals are the first consonants pronounced, 
suggests that this is not only because they are the easiest in them- 
selves, but because the muscular apparatus of the lips and the 
tongue have been the first exercised in the act of nursing and 
sucking. He states, moreover, that in the progressive develop- 
ment of his language, the child always obeys the law of the least 
effort. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 109 

insignificant by the side of all that education fur- 
nishes him. His spontaneous inventions are, as it 
were, an obstacle ; they retard more than they 
favour progress in taking complete possession, for 
they make it necessary for the child to unlearn his 
own language before learning ours. 

IV 

It is not only in the acquisition of the ordinary 
words of the language, it is also in the grammatical 
work of the formation of words, of the construction 
of propositions and of sentences, that the child's 
inventive instinct finds itself, up to a certain point, 
in opposition to the efforts needed in learning the 
ordinary language. Nowhere better than in the 
evolution of language does this secret logic show 
itself ; it early rules the child's intelligence, some- 
times aiding and upholding it in its efforts, some- 
times, on the contrary, troubling and impeding it, 
by putting it in opposition with what there is of 
illogical, conventional, or artificial in the creations 
of the human mind. 

We shall show how this innate logic makes the 
little child a born enemy to grammar, just as later 
it will make war exist between him and certain 
rules of orthography. 

Even in the invention of new words, of barbar- 
isms which often adorn the child's language, we 
have to recognise the action of analogy. When 
once put in possession of a few words, the child is 
prompt to imagine others by derivation from these. 
Speech calls forth speech. Words engender words, 

by a sort of sprouting out ; and in language as in 
10 



110 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

everything else, we miglit say tliat it is only the first 
step that costs. But these words invented by the 
child are almost always logically invented. Chil- 
dren will say, for instance, deproche-toi for eloigne- 
toi (go away). George amuses himself in the gar- 
den by killing the slugs that devour his flowers. " I 
am,"' he says, " a limacier " (limace being the French 
for slug, so a slugger). With this termination ier 
he coins a substantive by resemblance to the words 
that he has already used : the voiturier, one who is 
occupied with voitures (carriages) ; the limacier is 
occupied with slugs — to kill them, it is true, but 
the slightest analogy suffices. Egger relates a 
similar example. "Emily sees a hoop (cerceau) 
broken and demands that it shall be taken to the 
' cerceaunierj I write as well as I can the word 
that she coins in attaching to cerceau the termina- 
tion that she has noticed in charbonnier (coal-man), 
cordonnier (shoemaker). Do not laugh at this bar- 
barism ; has not custom adopted many of the same 
sort ? Is ferhlantier (tinman) formed more regu- 
larly from/er hlanc (tin), cZot^^ier (nail-maker) from 
clou (a nail), ergoter (a quibbler) from ergo, printa- 
nier (vernal) from printemps (spring) ? In accept- 
ing these words grammarians and lexicographers 
uphold the authority of popular speech." * 

Indeed, it is the grammarians who have the last 
word with the child, but before accepting the rules 

* Egger, op. cit., p. 45. The same author cites the following 
fact : " One morning I asked my son, who had a cold, if he had 
coughed (tousse). He answered that he had not heard the tousse 
come." 



LEARNING TO SPEAK HI 

that they impose on him, the child debates a long 
time in his resistance, and sets up, in opposition to 
custom, the inspirations of his free and adventur- 
ous logic. One of the children observed by Egger, 
remembering that rendre (to give back) has the 
past participle rendu, said prendu for participle of 
prendre (to take), the participle of this verb being 
priSj eteindu for participle of eteindre (to extin- 
guish), the participle of which is eteint. Others 
insist on saying a les for aux, the former being lit- 
erally "to the"' (followed by a plural noun), and 
the latter being the form really used in French. So 
Laura Bridgman wrote eated for ate, seed for saw. 
I had some trouble in teaching a child of three 
years that the plural of cheval (horse) is chevaux ; 
one day a troop of cavalry was passing on the 
street, and the child called out to me, " Oh, papa ! 
there are soldiers a chevaux " (the usual form in 
French for horseback is singular, ^ cheval). So the 
child^s logic routed my grammar. This natural 
logic is so powerful that Max Miiller thought him- 
self justified in saying : " Children purify the lan- 
guage ; they have eliminated little by little a great 
many irregular forms." * 

This same logic is sometimes found in the first 
constructions of phrases by which the child tries 
his own powers, although generally we fail to see 
in the incorrectness of his incomplete propositions 
anything more than the effect of his poverty in the 
matter of words. Towards the end of the second 
year, according to Preyer, appear the first attempts 

* Max Miiller, Lectures on the Science of Language, i, 66. 



112 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

at grammatical construction by the joining of a 
substantive and an adjective.* "At twenty-eight 
months," says Egger, " my son knew the meaning 
of three words : ouvrir (to open), rideau (curtain), 
and pas (not) ; he put them together with a certain 
dexterity, accompanying them with a gesture and 
the monosyllable ga (that or there). ' Pas ouvrir 
ga * signifies ' the window is closed ' ; * pas rideau 
ga' means ' the window has no curtain.^ " The use 
of the negative is very interesting. In all we find 
the same way of going about it. They will say 
" Papa no," " Mamma no," to signify " This is not 
papa," " This is not mamma " ; " coffee no " to mean 
that there is no coffee. The same use of the infini- 
tive, too, is usually found in all. The child has a 
great deal of trouble in learning the moods, still 
m.ore than in learning the tenses, f and this above 
all in the conjugation of the irregular verbs. " The 
majority of Axel's sentences, towards the twenty- 
eighth month, are composed of only two words, of 
which one is usually a verb in the infinitive." At 
twenty-two months Tiedemann's son began to put 
several words together to form a sentence composed 
of a verb and a subject ; but he always used the in- 
finitive, not the imperative. % Moreover, the child 
will say vienez for venez (come) from his remem- 

* In the preceding chapter we have studied the reasons for 
the child's hesitation in using the verb to he in the little proposi- 
tions that he forms. 

f " At two years and seven months," says Egger, " my little 
niece Martha used quite regularly the modifications of tense, but 
she was still ignorant or awkward in the different moods," 

X He always omitted the article. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 113 

brance of je viens (I come). A little boy cited by 
Legouv^ said, " I hide it [an album of flowers] be- 
cause if the bumblebees come [yiendront, future ; 
whereas the usual French form would be in the 
present] they will eat the flowers." * 

The study of the language of deaf-mutes, of 
those who by new methods have been taught to 
speak, and who succeed in articulating by imita- 
tion of the movements of the tongue and of the 
lips, because they read the words on the mouth of 
those who can both hear and speak, seems also to 
show that in the child's construction of sentences, 
in his instinctive syntax, he obeys a natural logic, 
which mocks at the artificial and studied order of 
the language of adults. 

Nothing is more peculiar in appearance, or more 
rational at bottom, than the inversions natural to 
the deaf-mute, when he writes as well as when he 
speaks. At the end of several years of study, a deaf- 
mute, having to tell the striking events of the week, 
wrote in his journal : " M. Grevy president plus, 
parti, autre remplace, s'appelle Carnot." * (Trans- 
lated literally this would read : " M. Gr^vy presi- 
dent [no] more, gone, other takes his place, called 
Carnot.") \ One of his comrades, who was more 
advanced in his studies, expressed himself thus : 
"M. Gr^vy n'est plus president de la R^publique, 
un nouveau president le remplace qui s'appelle Car- 

* Legouve, Nos filles et nos fils, p. 4. 

f Another example : To say " Bertrand is as tall as a giraffe," a 
deaf-mute would say " Bertrand giraffe as tall," the two objects to 
be compared presenting themselves first to the mind, then the 
quality common to them. 



114 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

not." (Grevy is no longer president of tlie Repub- 
lic, a new president has replaced him, who is called 
Carnot.) 

In the two cases, with more or less correctness, 
the order followed is that of the succession of 
events, or, what amounts to the same thing, of the 
generation of ideas. A deaf-mute would never say 
or write of his own accord, " M. Carnot has re- 
placed M. Gr^vy." No, he expresses the facts in 
the very order in which he sees them occur; he 
notes successively the different phases of the event.* 
From this principle also— and this characteristic is 
not peculiar to deaf-mutes, as Goguillot wrongly 
believes ; it is common to all children— results the 
multiplicity of details, the prolixity of analysis, 
when one abstract generic word would suffice to 
express the same thought. Instead of saying "I 
have washed my hands," the deaf-mute exclaims ; 
" I have turned on the faucet from which flows the 
water to wash my hands." He will not content him- 
self with this brief proposition ; " I lack the means 
of subsistence," but will write, " I have no bread ; 
I have no money to buy any ; I find no work to 
earn any money." So the child^s intelligence, and 
consequently his language, is instinctively led more 
to analysis than to synthesis. Who, in listening to 
a child telling of an event he has seen, has not been 
struck by the talkative diffuseness of the little nar- 
rator, by the overweight and accumulation of de- 

* We borrow these examples from the very interesting book by 
Goguillot, Comment on fait parler les sourds-muets, Paris, Mas- 
son, 1889, p. 296. 



LExVRNING TO SPEAK 115 

tails that prolong his recital ? Is this not one of 
the secrets of the art of writing for children, to 
know how to avoid abstract and general expres- 
sions, the words that sum up and condense, and to 
multiply, on the contrary, the picturesque words, 
the details and the particulars ? 

Whatever may be the child's awkwardness of 
expression and his tendency to coin his own con- 
structions, he loses no time in entering into the 
current of custom, under the incessant action of 
the language that is spoken around him. At twenty- 
eight months. Axel used correct propositions ; he 
used the article. Other children are still more pre- 
cocious, and there is nothing surprising in this, for 
at this age the propositions uttered by the child 
have for the most part nothing personal in their 
form. The child repeats, above all, the sentences 
he has heard, even sentences in a strange language. 
He uses memory almost alone in play, and we know 
that the literal memory towards the age of three 
has a surprising force. It is the parrot age, when 
the child unceasingly repeats the same sentences, in 
a way, learned by heart. It is not really certain, 
moreover, that he understands all the words that 
he uses. The adverbs, also the conjunctions, remain 
for a long time mysterious, obscure things for him. 
Doubtless he very soon understands "More ! more ! " 
when, for instance, he demands that a game shall 
be continued. " A little," " much,'' enter as promptly 
into his vocabulary, but *^ almost," " too," " never," 
"always," and a great many other adverbs mean 
nothing to him until a little later. 

Many other questions would be interesting to 



116 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

study in this connection. For instance, how does 
the child, little by little, come to employ first direct 
objects, then indirect objects ? At twenty-two 
months and two days, the child observed by Pol- 
lock said: "Anna, give baby sugar /^* Imitation, 
first of all, explains this progress. Many grammar 
lessons will be necessary to explain to the child that 
he has made, without knowing it, a logical analysis. 
What will take still more time will be his emanci- 
pation from the childish phraseology. He will 
come only with difficulty to construct sentences in 
his own way, propositions of which the model has 
not been given him. This statement will not sur- 
prise any one who has had to direct beginners at 
schools in their first efforts at elocution and compo- 
sition. 

I am far from having analyzed all the operations 
included in getting command of a language. How 
many delicate transitions, how many difficult pas- 
sages in this natural evolution, which begins on 
the first day and lasts at least two or three years ! 
How many little acquisitions every day, little pro- 
gressive conquests! One day an articulation will 
appear, clear and distinct, a pure and limpid sound 
that reveals the human voice. But what a long 
time it will take for all the sounds of the al- 
phabet to be learned ! Another day appears the 
desire to imitate words that are heard ; but how 
many efforts must be made before the result will 
correspond to the intention, before the child will 
be able to repeat correctly what he hears ! There is 

* Pollock, loc. cit., p. 399. 



LEARNING TO SPEAK 117 

a moment, also, when the child shows that he has 
finally grasped the association of some object and 
some sound ; he proves it by showing the object 
and performing the motion that responds to his 
utterance. But he is still far from the day when 
he will no longer be contented with gestures and 
motions to indicate that he understands this rela- 
tion, when he will pronounce by himself, almost, 
the right word. When he has begun to understand 
the signification of words, he will not enter into 
possession of his little vocabulary at one bound; 
he will learn one word to-day, another to-morrow ; 
he will slowly explore the unknown country that 
he has entered, discovering something new each 
day. But weeks, months, will roll by before he can 
manage not only concrete terms, which represent 
material things, but the expressions, much more 
difficult to grasp, that correspond to moral ideas, and 
next to abstract and general ideas. " Language,'^ 
says Max Miiller, who wished to mark very forcibly 
what an advantage speech gives to man over the 
animal — " language is the Rubicon of the mind, and 
the animal is incapable of crossing it." The image 
is expressive, but as far as the child is concerned, 
language is not the only Rubicon to cross ; there is 
rather a multitude of little streams that he must 
cross, one after the other, by successive bounds, be- 
fore he can reach the promised land. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY: WALKING AND PLAY 

I. The child's voluntary activity. — Different degrees of will. — 
The motor idea. — The choice between several desires or several 
motives. — Involuntary and voluntary inhibitions. — Will, inde- 
pendent of movement. — The same motions are successively 
instinctive and willed. — The first voluntary movements of the 
child. — Imitative and expressive movements. — Does keeping 
the head straight depend on will 1 — The part of will in the 
acquisition of language. — Proofs of good and of bad will. — Will 
in the co-ordination of movements. — Weakness of will in the 
child. — Hypnotism. II. Learning to walk. — The solidity of the 
bones and the strength of the muscles. — Learning to stand. — 
Variations in the date of the first step. — The rhythm of walk- 
ing determined by instinct. — Exercise. — Moral influences. — 
The part of will. — Walking retarded in the case of idiots. III. 
Play. — The child plays before he can speak or walk. — Precocity 
of the instinct of play. — Importance of play in the child's life. 
— Imitation an important principle of play. — The part of the 
feelings : the social feelings and affectionate feelings. — Playing 
with a doll. — Military games. — The part of intelligence in play. 
— Instinct of construction and of destruction. — The voluntary 
activity in play. — Play is a study. 



The cMld's voluntary activity is exercised above 

all in motions, in gestures, in the expressive signs 

of the physiognomy or of language. The happy 

age of childhood does not yet know the struggles 

118 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY 119 

nor consequently those long and complicated delib- 
erations from which come inner resolutions, deci- 
sions at long range, so to speak, which remain or 
can remain a long time in the state of purely men- 
tal decisions. Usually the child's will shows itself 
by the immediate execution of the act. His reflec- 
tion is short ; his resolutions allow no delay ; the 
effect follows the volition immediately. If we 
analyze carefully the causes that give the child's 
will this prompt and impetuous character, we shall 
be convinced that it results above all from the 
small number of ideas at his disposal. Behind a 
voluntary act, in the adult, there is almost always 
a large number of ideas in opposition one with the 
other, of which a single one, the motor idea, ends 
by ruling and taking the upper hand. The others 
have been compared, put in the balance with it, 
and, for some time at least, have suspended the final 
judgment and retarded its action. In the little 
child, however, the voluntary motion is the result 
of one idea ; this idea is not opposed, has no strug- 
gle to undergo, no victory to gain, and consequently 
it draws the action on immediately. The little 
child's will, towards the fourth or fifth month, is 
not a choice between several motives. Doubtless it 
presupposes a motive, without which it would not 
be will, but this motive has not met an antagonist 
in a consciousness still poor and empty of ideas. 

Such is the first step of the voluntary activity, 
more dependent as yet on the sensibility than on 
the intelligence, more dependent on the world of 
desires, of appetites, than on the world of ideas. 
We know with what energy the child often says 



120 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

about a plaything or any other object, " I want, I 
want ! " but this is only the expression of an ardent 
desire. How often even in the grown man "I 
want " is simply a synonym of desire ! 

In the development of consciousness and the 
progress of ideas, however, there comes a moment, 
towards the twelfth or the fifteenth month, in 
which the will is manifested. To be sure, it has not 
yet acquired the force and the energy that belong 
only to the adult will, but it comprises all its essen- 
tial elements ; it is a choice between several repre- 
sentations. When, in spite of the resistance of the 
sensibility, in spite of its natural repulsion, your 
child decides to do a thing that is disagreeable to 
him, in order to please you, or because he has 
understood that he will be rewarded, he performs 
an act of will in the most complete meaning of the 
word. He represents to himself the act to be ac- 
complished, the motions to be performed. See him, 
for instance, going quietly to be put to bed ; he still 
has the desire to be awake, to be amused, but he 
has been told that his bedtime has come, that his 
mother wants him to go to bed ; he vacillates be- 
tween his own inclination and the representation 
of his mother's command ; he hesitates, if not be- 
tween two reflective motives, at least between two 
impulses, between two desires ; he finally decides, 
he obeys, he wills to obey. 

Will does not consist merely in the performance 
of an act ; it shows itself also in the refusal to per- 
form an act. It has its negative form, so to speak, 
as well as its positive form. To will not is to will, 
or, to speak more exactly, the act of not willing is 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY 121 

still a voluntary act. The disobediences of cMld- 
hood, so frequent in the first age, are also voluntary- 
acts, willed. 

There are doubtless involuntary inhibitions.* 
A crying child becomes suddenly quiet because he 
has heard a violent noise, or because an angry 
gesture from his mother has frightened him. Here 
the suspension of the act does not depend at all on 
the will, it is as though forced and constrained. In 
other cases, however, when the child, though begged 
and exhorted, refuses, in spite of your appeals, to 
hold out his hand to you, to give you a kiss, in a 
word, to repeat a movement that he has already 
voluntarily performed many times, there is in his 
resistance an effect of will, the deliberate inhibition 
of an act which he turns over in his mind, but which, 
by caprice, he will not consent to perform at this 
moment. 

Even in childhood, then, will is in a way independ- 
ent of movement, since it can show itself by immo- 
bility, by silence, by the suspension of a movement 
begun. Of course we cannot expect that a little 
child two or three years old will rule himself to any 
great extent, and resist the impulses of his successive 

* Compare Marion (Revue scientifique, 1890, i, p. 777). It is 
involuntary inhibition wherj the child, hindered or watched, refrains 
in spite of himself from doing what is forbidden ; for instance, 
when, ready to cry, he stops short, on being spoken to by a stran- 
ger ; when, in the park, just as he is going to walk on the grass, he 
quickly checks himself on seeing the uniform of a guard. But 
when the child restrains himself, and of his own accord finds in 
his very ideas and feelings a counterbalance to his temptations, 
then there is an inhibition of a new kind, which is a very positive 
willing. 



122 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

desires, to wliicli scarcely anything can form a coun- 
terbalance. It is not impossible, however — and here 
is the secret of a liberal education, early begun — to 
develop from the second and third year the germs 
of spontaneous inhibition, that which voluntarily 
renounces the satisfaction of an instinctive desire, 
in order to conform to reason, represented for the 
child by the advice and the commands of parents. 
The child that can be guided merely by his moth- 
er's smile, and later by her mildest and pleasantest 
words, even when her advice is contrary to his dear- 
est wishes, will accustom himself little by little, in 
his mental representations, to compare the for and 
the against, the pleasures that the accomplishment 
of an act promises him, and those that will result 
from abstaining from that act. And from these 
little reflective comparisons, as far as they can be 
produced at this age, will be evolved, little by little, 
the beginning of liberty and the first education of 
character.* 

Philosophers who are, above all, physiologists — 
Preyer, for instance — seem to believe that there are 
voluntary movements pure and simple, as well as 
movements necessarily involuntary. Will, in their 
theory, which admits only facts, phenomena, and 
which proscribes faculties as chimeras invented by 
metaphysicians, would accordingly exist only in 
acts and in motions. " Many willed movements," 
says Preyer, "are executed involuntarily — e. g., 

* " The development of the will in the actually executed move- 
ments of the child and the development of non-willing in the in- 
hibition of frequently repeated movements, furnish the foundation 
for the formation of character." (The Senses and the Will, p. 195.) 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY 123 

talking in sleep; many involuntary movements, 
voluntarily/' * It is evident, however, that the mo- 
tions in themselves are neither necessarily volun- 
tary nor necessarily involuntary. The same motion 
— for instance, an emission of voice — may be in turn, 
instinctive and unconscious, instinctive but con- 
scious, involuntary in so far as it is instinctive, and 
finally intentional, truly expressive, and conse- 
quently voluntary. Will, when it appears, takes 
possession of acts that have already been performed 
automatically. It cannot create new movements, 
but it imprints a new character on the old ones. It 
isolates them, or unites them ; it hastens them, or it 
retards them. We do not represent will by a sort of 
psychological mythology, as an entity hidden behind 
the muscles, and, so to speak, holding the strings of 
the marionettes. 'No, but in the beginning there are 
certainly muscular excitations, sometimes the blind 
force of nature, instinct, sometimes intellectual 
representations, ideas, which are at the same time 
forces localized, whatever be their origin in the 
cerebral organs, active ideas, which struggle among 
themselves until one of them controls and gives 
place to a distinct, definite motion, working towards 
an end, and consequently voluntary. 

Just as consciousness emerges from unconscious- 
ness, or, better, succeeds it, lighting up phenomena 
until now obscure and unperceived, so will comes 
from instinct and automatism, or, to speak more 
exactly, takes its place among instinctive and auto- 
matic acts. Human nature develops as the stem of 

* The Senses and the Will, p. 193. 



124 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

a plant which, herbaceous at first, changes its char- 
acter and blossoms out in flowers. 

All the motions that we have described in other 
chapters, even the most instinctive, as suction, for 
instance, become voluntary little by little. On the 
other hand, the expressive and the imitative mo- 
tions, although they appear to be voluntary by 
nature — an expressive sign corresponding to the 
idea it expresses, an act of imitation presupposing 
the representation of what is imitated — may be 
produced in the beginning under an involuntary 
form. 

All observers agree in recognising the fact that 
in the life of the child there can be nothing that 
resembles voluntary activity before the fourth 
month. It is at this age that the first intentional 
and willed imitations appear ;* the child's nurse, for 
instance, hides behind her hand or turns her head 
away ; the child does the same, accompanying his 
action by peals of laughter. At the same age, the 
first really significative expressions show them- 
selves : the gesture to point out an object, the cry 
to call some one, a motion of the head towards the 
door to indicate that the hour for the walk has 
come. At the same age, also, appear the first efforts 
to attain an end, conscious and, from now on, vol- 
untary — the act of prehension to grasp an object 
and to hold it. To be sure, it is not necessary that 

* " The ordinary childish performances, the first attempts at 
imitation in the fourth month, and the greater independence in 
taking food (e. g., taking hold of the bottle), are proofs of the di- 
rect participation of the intellect in the occurrence of voluntary 
movements." (The Senses and the Will, p. 338.) 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY 125 

the child, in order to accomplish a voluntary mo- 
tion, shall understand the mechanism of this motion 
— will he know it even when he is a man ? It is 
enough for him to have the idea of an end, more or 
less clearly defined. And, consequently, in admit- 
ting that from the fourth month the child is capable 
of some volition, we simply recognise the fact that 
his intelligence is awakened, that it is able hence- 
forth to associate two ideas — the idea of the object 
that he wants to take, for instance, and the idea of 
the motion to make in order to grasp it. 

Let us guard against exaggeration, and not seek 
for will where it does not exist. It is thus that 
Preyer errs, we believe, in considering as voluntary 
the motions by which the child keeps his head in 
an upright position.* We know the weakness of 
the new-born child in this respect, that only at the 
end of several weeks can he control his swinging 
head, as it leans sometimes forward, sometimes 
backward, to the right or to the left.f It is by a 
little progress each day that the child arrives at 
equilibrium. But far from seeing in this progress 
"acts of will to a great extent," we think that it 
is explained, above all, by the hardening of the 

* The Senses and the Will, p. 264. Preyer relies on the argu- 
ment that other motions of the head are vigorous, and that 
consequently the weakness of the muscles has nothing to do with 
the case. 

f According to the observations made on a hundred and fifty 
children by Demme (cited by Preyer. p. 165), the head is held in 
equilibrium towards the end of the third month, or during the 
first half of the fourth, in very strongly developed children, and a 
little later in children less vigorous; later still, in the fifth or the 
sixth month, in children a little weakly. 
11 



126 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

muscles. At any rate, we must admit that as 
the child^s sight develops, and as, in order to see 
better, he finds it to his advantage to hold his head 
still, he is led by the needs of sight to hold his head 
in an upright position ; but this position is possible 
only by virtue of the hardening of the bones and 
of the muscles. So it seems to us a mistake to 
consider as voluntary, at least at first, the move- 
ments of the eyes ; there is here an innate and 
unconscious adaptation of the eyeballs; and it is 
only at the end of some time, when he has become 
really attentive, that the child performs an act of 
will when he turns his head to the right or to the 
left, to direct his look towards an object that he 
wishes to fix and to observe. 

There is no doubt but that will is involved in 
the acquisition of language. The apprenticeship 
of speech is partly a study, and, like all studies, 
requires attention and efi:ort. It is the will of the 
child that removes, little by little, difficulties of 
articulation at first insurmountable; will, aided by 
nature, to be sure, and by the progress of the vocal 
organs. It is will, too, under the form of a sus- 
tained attention, that aids the child in perceiving 
distinctly, in retaining definitely, the words that 
he hears pronounced. Watch a baby listening to 
his mother while she speaks, and you will notice, 
even now, in his physiognomy, in his attitude,* the 
outward signs of attention which you will find 

* One of the most striking signs of attentive effort on the part 
of the child studying the language, is, that when you speak to 
him, he watches your lips attentively, as if trying to read your 
words there. 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY 127 

later in the pupil learning a lesson or studying out 
a problem. Although in the majority of cases the 
discovery of the signification of each word springs 
spontaneously from the intelligence, there certainly 
are words that the child cannot penetrate, which, 
so to speak, will not open to him, except at the 
price of an effort of reflection. To speak is not 
only to think, it is to will ; and, all conditions being 
equal, in the school of the mother tongue as in all 
schools, the child will stand first that knows best 
where to place his attention, and consequently his 
will. 

In his study of the mother tongue, the child gives 
proof, not only of his good will, but also of his bad 
will. It is not rare to see children of two or three 
years of age refuse to repeat the words that are 
proposed for their imitation ; they turn their heads 
away ; they shrink from the effort that is demanded 
of them, by a feeling of powerlessness, perhaps, 
and because they really cannot, but also, when it is 
a question of easy syllables that have been pro- 
nounced several times before, by caprice, because 
they do not wish to say what they are asked to say. 
There is here an act of inhibition, a veritable con- 
flict of ideas and of desires, which ends in the 
child's refusal to perform the act that is demanded 
of him. 

It is above all in his practical acts, in the co- 
ordination of his movements, that the child gives 
proof of will exercised in attaining an end. His 
nascent will finds itself, so to speak, in the pres- 
ence of anarchy ; incoherent movements, caused in 
all the senses, either by instinctive impulses or by 



128 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

tlie caprices of the sensibility. It is a question of 
establishing order in this chaos, and we can see 
that the child applies himself to this task very 
early. As has been remarked elsewhere, this very 
work of organizing movements interests the child 
as much as, if not more than, the definite result 
that he is working towards. Dr. Sikorski says that 
in his opinion this is the signification of the privi- 
lege that so early arouses the child^s ambition, to 
hold the spoon himself, to eat alone, without the 
help of any one. Although he is hungry and 
impatient to satisfy his appetite, even while know- 
ing that he will attain this result more quickly 
if he accepts the nourishment at the hands of his 
nurse, he prefers to eat more slowly, but to serve 
himself. 

The fact has often been noticed that the little 
child, credulous, docile, in the absence of every 
solid intellectual principle, and with the meagre 
consistency of his will, finds himself in a state more 
or less comparable to that of a person being hyp- 
notized. " All children,'* says Guyau, " can be hyp- 
notized very easily.*' * Preyer confirms this by 
interesting observations. " For example, if I say to 
my two-and-a-half -year-old child, after he has al- 
ready eaten something, but is just on the point of 
biting off a fresh piece from his biscuit — if I say 
categorically, without giving any reason at all, with 
a positiveness that will tolerate no contradiction, 
very loud, yet without frightening him, ' The child 
has had enough now ! ' then it comes to pass that 

* Guyau, Education et heredite, p. 16. 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY 129 

he at once puts away from his mouth the biscuit, 
without finishing his bite, and ends his meal alto- 
gether. It is easy to bring children even three or 
four years old to the opinion that a feeling of pain 
(after a hit) is gone, or that they are not tired or 
thirsty, provided only that our demands are not 
extravagant, and are not pressed too often, and that 
our assertion is a very decided one." * There is some 
truth in these allegations. However, we do not 
think that in the examples cited and in analogous 
cases the child is as convinced as people claim of 
the states that are suggested to him, nor that he feels 
himself really rid of the hunger or the suffering 
merely because of the fact that some one tells him 
in a tone of authority that he does not feel it any 
longer. With the mobility of impression and the 
inconstancy of attention that belong to this age, 
however, he allows himself to be distracted ; his 
thought turns towards other objects; he forgets 
what has just been occupying him. Notice, more- 
over, that it is only in cases in which the sensations 
felt are not very keen (Preyer acknowledges this 
himself) that the child accepts these suggestions. 
He no longer thinks that he suffers, that he needs 
food, because in truth this suffering is slight, this 
need not deep. Try the procedures of hypnotism 
on a child that is really hungry, that is crying 
because of keen suffering, and nothing succeeds in 
appeasing his excitation. 

The proof that hypnotism has nothing to do 
with these sudden forgettings, these abrupt modifi- 

* Preyer, The Senses and the Will, p. 344. 



130 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

cations of the state of the chihi's mind, is that of 
his own accord, without your intervention, he will 
suddenly interrupt his cries, his complaints, if a 
bird flies, if a stranger presents himself, in short, if 
any accident suspends his preoccupation and directs 
his attention elsewhere. Moreover, it is allowable 
to suppose that the child, when he gives himself up 
to your commands, simply obeys your orders ; he 
says what you say, simply because his will gives 
up to yours, because, being conscious of his weak- 
ness, he does not wish to engage in a struggle with 
a force that he feels to be far superior to his own. 

It is none the less true that the will of the little 
child, excepting in the case of some unpromising 
natures, some individuals that are obstinate and 
rebellious from their birth, is usually impressible 
and easily bent. This, moreover, renders the educa- 
tion of the first years still more delicate than is gen- 
erally believed. It is the child's volitions that will 
influence his whole life ; it is on the direction given 
to his budding individuality that his future char- 
acter in large part depends. On the one hand, will 
is not, as metaphysical psychologists say, a power 
one and indivisible, an absolute power. Will ad- 
mits of degrees, and according as the child has 
lived in such and such surroundings, according as 
he has been submitted to one educative influence 
or to another, he will be more or less in a state to 
approach the highest voluntary energy of which a 
human soul is capable. Weak education, which by 
excessive yielding gives way to all the child's ca- 
prices, is not less pernicious than the rigid educa- 
tion that makes it a law to oppress, to break the 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY 131 

will. On the other hand, there are volitions, an 
ensemble of actions accomplished with reflection, 
with intention, rather than a single voluntary- 
power ; one may be very energetic on one point, 
very weak on another. It is the pedagogical in- 
fluences of the first years, the most important of all, 
that must develop in the child, by liberal super- 
vision as by reasonable compliance, the different 
movements of the childish will. 

II 

To say, "How does the child learn to walk ? " is to 
use an expression not really exact. As a matter of 
fact, everything in walking is not learned, acquired 
by experience ; in this action, as in all others, we 
must give due credit to instinct. The instinctive 
character of locomotion is assuredly more marked 
in the young of animals, as they know how to 
stand on their legs immediately after they are born. 
But, although slower in its evolution, less impera- 
tive in its impulses, the locomotor instinct does 
none the less exist in man. We have already had 
occasion to say that the slowness, the gropings in 
the development, do not prove at all that instinct 
does not exist, and these ought to be imputed to 
the weakness of the organs. 

Locomotion is, above all, a question of physical 
strength, of the solidity of the bones and of muscu- 
lar vigour. A Swiss observer, Demme, who has 
studied one hundred and fifty children from this 
point of view, finds that only very robust children 
can stand for several minutes at the age of from 
nine to ten months ; children of medium strength 



132 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

can do it a little later ; delicate, weak cliildren to- 
wards the twelfth month, or still later. If children 
stand before the ninth month, it is the result of 
exceptional vigonr.* And what is true of the 
progress in keeping an upright position is true also 
in walking. 

Still, walking does presuppose a real apprentice- 
ship. There is, so to speak, an art of walking, as 
there is an art of speaking, and the child acquires 
it only by a series of preparatory actions, and by 
slow progress.! Among the preliminaries must be 
counted the act of standing. 

" Os homini sublime dedit coelumque videre, 
Jussit, . . ." 

said the poet, and the observers of our time confirm 
Ovid's assertion in less poetic terms. " If infants 
could live away from human society, they would 
certainly adopt the erect posture of their own 
accord, because it is advantageous for command of 
the surrounding region through eye and ear.'' | But 
the new-born child does not raise himself imme- 
diately. He tries it when on his nurse's lap, press- 

* Cited by Preyer, The Senses and the Will, p. 270. 

f All agree in recommending that as much as possible be left 
to Nature in the development of walking. " By hastening the first 
steps people run the risk of deforming children's legs," says Cadet 
de Gassicourt (Revue scientifique, 1890, i, p. 438). " It would be 
better to delay walking until the age of fifteen months, and even 
then to watch the position of the feet and of the body when the 
first steps are taken. Care should be taken, too, to keep the child 
from walking too much ; he always walks three or four times as 
far as the grown people that accompany him ; he is continually 
running ahead and returning." 

I Preyer, The Senses and the Will, p. 271. 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY 133 

ing himself against her breast, putting his little 
arms around her neck. He trains himself after- 
ward by placing his feet on the floor, as he is held 
up by watchful hands, or resting himself on a chair 
until he comes to the point of doing without the 
support, when he is able to control the muscles of 
his legs, and has acquired enough assurance to need 
no more help. " It was at the end of the third 
month,'^ says Preyer, " that Axel first succeeded in 
his efforts to stand, for only an instant, but with- 
out a support. ... In the sixteenth month the 
child could stand without being held, he could even 
stamp on the floor with his foot." 

There is no doubt but that in his efforts to keep 
himself in an upright position, which physiologists 
say is more difficult than walking, the child is 
guided by instinct. It does not take much urging 
to give him the desire to pull his little body 
together, so to speak, and to raise it. "We feel that 
he aspires to this of his own accord, and the proof 
is that he seems to be more happy when he tries, 
and above all when he succeeds in standing, than 
when he remains nonchalantly lying down or seated. 
Action is a source of pleasure, when it conforms to 
J^ature. Moreover, imitation, which permeates the 
whole life of the child, has also its influence. In 
families where there are several minor children, 
the younger ones, encouraged by the chattering of 
the older ones, learn more rapidly to talk ; so they 
will be found to try earlier, and to succeed in 
standing alone.* 

* " If a child grows up among other little children, some of 



134 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

A great point is certainly scored when tlie up- 
right position is assured, when the child knows how 
to stiffen his muscles, to place his feet firmly on the 
floor, without losing his equilibrium ; but he cannot 
walk or run as yet. It is one thing to stand still in 
one place, and quite another to put one foot before 
the other, as the animal does, to move in space. 
Many months seem to separate the two operations 
in the case of the child. 

Of fifty children observed by Demme, two could 
walk alone, timidly to be sure, and only a few steps, at 
nine months ; these were able to pass almost without 
transition from the upright position to locomotion, 
thanks to a particular superabundance of life and 
of strength. But none of the others began to walk 
until about the last of the eighteenth month. 

Nothing is more variable than the date of the 
first step,* even in children whose physical consti- 
tution is all that could be desired, and who seem 
equally well built. It has been claimed that there 
is an inverse ratio between the precocity of locomo- 
tion and that of language, that the child who speaks 
early walks late, and vice versa. This does not 
seem unlikely, Nature economizing willingly on one 
side what she spends in excess on the other ; being 
given, also, this reason, still more serious, that loco- 

■whom are walking, some learning to walk, then he will, as a rule, 
be able to stand erect and to run, without any support from the 
mother, earlier than if he grows up alone." (The Senses and 
the Will, p. 273.) 

* It is from the Welfth to the twenty-fourth month, and most 
often in the last month of the second year, that children usually 
begin to walk. 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY I35 

motion is above all a physical act, language above 
all an intellectual act, so that the advancement of 
the one and the corresponding slowness of the other 
might be considered even now as an example of the 
great law governing human life, according to which 
the moral should suffer when the physical predom- 
inates, and vice versa. We do not believe, however, 
that the relation in question has been sufficiently 
verified by experience for there to be any interest 
in seeking an explanation of it. What remains cer- 
tain is that in the mass of new-born children, as 
in a badly managed ra ce, some racers start much 
sooner than others. And in finishing the history 
of the education of walking, we should perhaps 
convince ourselves that the cause of these differ- 
ences ought sometimes to be sought elsewhere than 
in the inequality of physical forces. 

The faculty of putting the legs in motion, one 
after the other, of alternately bending and extend- 
ing them, in a word, what is called the locomotor 
rhythm, is in the child, as in the animal, an affair 
of instinct. The proof of this is that long before 
he can rest his foot on the floor, the child, lying in 
his bed, in the bath, or on the carpet, already accom- 
plishes these bendings and these stretchings. What 
shows this fact still better, is that long before the 
child can stand, if we put him down and hold him 
under the arms, and then walk him up and down 
on the floor, he will of his own accord perform this 
alternating motion of the lower limbs, which is 
the necessary condition of walking. " Mark," says 
Bain, " a child jumping in the arms or lying on its 
back kicking; observe the action of the two legs 



136 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

and yon will find that tlie child shoots them out in 
turn with great vigour and rapidity. Notice also 
when it first puts its feet to the ground ; long before 
it can balance itself, you may see it alternating the 
limbs to a full walking sweep. Only by virtue of 
this instinctive alternation is walking so soon pos- 
sible to be attained. No other combination equally 
complex could be acquired at the end of the first 
year. Both a vigorous, spontaneous impulse to 
move the lower limbs and a rhythmical or alternat- 
ing direction given to this impulse are concerned 
in this very early acquisition.'' * Preyer is of the 
same opinion, and he also recognises the fact that 
there is a pre-established adaptation of the locomo- 
tor movements. He cites the following observa- 
tion : A child was held up and carried forward for 
the first time at the end of the fifth month, his feet 
touching the floor ; immediately his legs began to 
move alternately; each step was fully executed, 
without hesitation, without irregularity. When 
the child was held too far above the floor, the alter- 
nation of the movements was interrupted, but the 
foot in the air made a new step. The contact of 
the floor with one foot seemed enough to excite the 
other to movement, f 

Instinct, then, gives the impulse ; it indicates 
the rhythmic motion that ought to be executed ; but 
the muscular forces must second this impulse by 
rendering the execution possible. No doubt phys- 
ical strength increases by itself, because of natural 

* Senses and Intellect, part i, chap. iv. 
f Preyer, the Senses and the Will, p. 274. 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY 137 

growth., but exercise will also contribute to its 
development. Here we touch, on one of the reasons 
that explain why some children walk earlier, others 
later ; they will walk earlier if appropriate exercise 
has prepared them to do so. This is why the artifi- 
cial means that are employed to facilitate walking^ 
to assure it when it is hesitating and staggering, 
may be a good thing in spite of the drawbacks that 
they present. After Eousseau, Kant severely con- 
demned walking machines. " Is it not strange,'' he 
says, " to wish to teach, a child to walk ! As if a man 
could not walk without instruction."* Physical 
deformities often result from the use of these 
methods of acceleration : bow legs, hollow chests ; 
surely it is better to trust to Nature, to the exercises 
that she calls forth. Let us allow the child to roll on 
the carpet, to drag himself about on the floor, to 
creep on his knees, to push himself backward or 
forward with his feet ; in these natural gymnastics 
the mechanism of locomotion will strengthen by it- 
self. ^ " Walking on all-fours,'' says Preyer, " is the 
natural preparatory school for normal walking. 
There will come a moment when the child will raise 
himself up, and when leaning on chairs, holding to 
the walls, or even aided by a friendly hand, he will 
go proudly across the room that he has often cov- 
ered on all-fours, on the hard floor that has given him 
more than one bruise. 

It is to be noticed that when it has been slowly 
prepared for by natural exercises, the act of walk- 
ing alone and without aid comes suddenly and defi- 

* Kant, Pedagogic et rEducation physique. 



/ 



138 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

nitely. Like one brouglit back from tke dead 
responding to the call of a miraculous voice, the 
child rises and comes forth. No doubt he could 
walk some time before he decides that he wishes to 
do so ; the mechanism is all ready, but he does not 
dare to use it yet. He has to conquer a very 
natural timidity, the apprehensions that this new 
and difficult action inspires in him, before he can 
trust himself entirely to travel through space. My 
elder son, who for some time had been able to take 
several steps by hanging on his mother's skirts, or 
by her hand, one fine day, in a shop, when no one 
was noticing him, quietly escaped ; all of a sudden 
he was seen at the other end of the room, without, 
so far as we could see, any appreciable cause having 
started him on this first escapade. The feeling of 
his strength had come to him, his confidence was 
sufficiently established. Preyer made an analogous 
observation : " It was after he was fifteen months 
old that Axel, standing on his feet, began suddenly, 
for the first time, to walk around the table, in a 
hesitating way, to be sure, staggering like a drunken 
man trying to run, but at the same time without 
falling.^^ 

Whatever rapidity, whatever decision, the child 
may sometimes put into his first effort at walking 
independently and freely, still he is far from having 
conquered all the difficulties. He will be sure to 
advance at first only with caution, his arms ex- 
tended before him as if he were showing the way 
with his hands, in reality because he still has some 
trouble in keeping his equilibrium. This is seen 
above all if the child has walked too early ; that is 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY I39 

to say, before his organs have been sufficiently 
developed. Equilibrium soon becomes a matter of 
habit; but in the beginning some attention and 
some effort is necessary in order to maintain it. 
Even we ourselves have trouble in keeping our 
balance, if we have had to stay in bed a long time. 

What we want to establish above all, before 
finishing this subject, is, that the moral faculties 
and the will are not strangers to the progress of 
the child. Walking, it will be said, is an affair of 
muscles, of suppleness, or of physical strength! 
Assuredly so, but a question also of character and 
of moral temperament.* From the way in which 
the child walks, we can tell whether he will be 
active, impetuous, or, on the contrary, indolent, 
slow. The child that has ardent desires will be 
pushed ahead by his very ardour. He will wish, 
earlier than others, to get for himself, to examine 
at short range, the object of his desires. He will 
perhaps fall oftener than his comrades that do not 
risk so much and advance with more caution, but 
he will also pick himself up more quickly, and cer- 
tainly he will walk earlier. A sudden emotion, a 
feeling of fear, will sometimes be the cause of 
hastening the denouement, and will triumph over 
hesitations ; when frightened, the child will cross 
the room to get away from the danger. 

A general fact, showing clearly that the moral 
nature is interested in the apparently material 

* " Without exaggeration," says Marion, " I hold that the educa- 
tion of character is going on at the same time with that of loco- 
motion, that the way in which a child learns to walk is not without 
moral importance." (Revue scientifique, 1890, i, p. 77.) 



140 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

action of locomotion, is that idiots are very late in 
walking. It is not only because their sensibility is 
obtuse, because they have not the normal desire to 
approach a desired object, or a person dear to them,* 
it is also because they are incapable of attention, 
and without attention the child could not guide his 
first steps. 

Although instinctive in their origin, the special 
movements that walking presupposes are after- 
ward necessarily attentive, and consequently vol- 
untary. Afterward, under the rules of habit, 
they will become automatic. Here all the modes 
of activity are joined: the tendency to put one foot 
before the other comes from instinct, but the direc- 
tion given to these movements, the resolution to do 
without all support, to attain an end, to run to the 
mother who holds out her arms — all these are acts 
of will. Moreover, will shows itself again under 
another form, in inspiring the child with confidence 
in himself. In order to embark upon his first voy- 
age in his room or in his garden, he needs courage 
and boldness. If we doubted this, it would be enough 
to consider the pride that shines in his eyes, the 
joy that suffuses his triumphant face, the noisy 
peals of laughter that sometimes accompany his 
first run from one chair to another, from his father 
to his mother, for us to be convinced that he is 
conscious of performing a great feat, and that 

* " When the idiot has come to recognise his food, and when he 
sees it, he fidgets on his chair, utters cries, stretches out his hands, 
tries to get nearer to it. So showing him his food is a process 
employed to force him to stand and to move forward." (Dr. Sollier, 
op. cit., p. 91.) 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY 141 

consequently there is here something more than a 
series of material phenomena; there is an effort 
and the happy feeling of success in the effort. 

Ill 

When the child has accomplished these two 
decisive and all-important efforts of his life, from 
which he emerges capable of speaking and of walk- 
ing, he has at his disposal the two essential elements, 
the two principal elements, of his play, which will 
almost always consist in speech and in movement. 
To leap, to run, and, on the other hand, to talk with 
his soldiers, with his doll, later with his playmates, 
such will be the child^s principal amusements. 
There is no mute play, no motionless play. But does 
not the child play before he knows how to walk 
and to talk ? He has played long before this, if 
by play we mean simply to amuse, to divert oneself, 
to perform actions that have no end but that of 
pleasure. We shall not expect of the nursing baby 
the play that presupposes the faculties of a more 
advanced age — sensibility, imagination, a certain 
power of combination; but play is not confined 
exclusively to these categories ; the child can play 
as soon as he can act, in whatever way it may be. 
The exercise of the senses, the first movements of 
the legs and of the arms, the first exercise of voice, 
may become for the little child occasions of diver- 
sion and of play. He plays in his cradle, when he 
can finger the bright flowers on his coverlet or his 
curtain ; in his bath, when he can splash the water 
with his hands ; on a carpet, when he can move his 
legs and give himself up to unrestrained gymnas- 
12 



142 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

tics. His cooing, his chattering, is also play in a 
sense; the child amuses himself with his miintel- 
ligible prattling. !N'oises that are particularly 
amusing— a bell, the sound of his rattle, a whistle 
— all these give him pleasure and make him cry 
out with joy. The child is naturally joyous. Every 
activity that conforms to ^N'ature, in his early de- 
velopment, is really play to him. Joy, as Froebel 
says, is the soul of all the child's actions. 

It is not necessary to invent playthings,* to put 
artificial instruments into his hands. In the spon- 
taneity of his instinct for play, the child will very 
soon find little inventions for himself, will think 
up exercises that will give him pleasure. See him, 
from the second year on, making holes in the sand, 
building walls, digging ditches. See him take a 
newspaper and spread it out before him, comically 
pretending to read, moving his lips and making 
some sort of sounds with them. " I have under my 
eyes," says Michelet, "a baby hardly eighteen 
months old, who, from the time that he could place 
two little pieces of wood one on top of the other, 
has delightedly clasped his hands, and admired, 
plainly saying to himself, as did the Creator, ^ It is 
good.' Another, two years and a half old, stronger 
in this form of architecture, calls his sister to wit- 
ness his talent, and says, ^ Baby did it.' " f 

The child sees play everywhere. Preyer tells 

* We do not wish to question the utility of playthings. There 
is no doubt but that the intellectual inferiority of children brought 
up in the country results in part from the fact that they have no 
playthings such as city children have. 

f Michelet, Nos fils, p. 70. 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY 143 

liow Axel said ^^We are going to play colours" 
every time that his father submitted him to his 
ordinary exercises to find out his aptitude in dis- 
tinguishing colours. Dr. Sikorski noted the same 
fact. " The absence of discernment between amuse- 
ments and serious exercises, or rather between the 
pure observation of the things that surround him 
and the activity resulting from creation and from 
fancy, is one peculiarity of the child^s activity." * 

A complete psychology of play would require 
long study. Without going so far as to say, with 
Froebel, that play is the most perfect means of the 
child's development, we shall willingly repeat after 
him that play is not a frivolous thing for the child^ 
but has a deep signification, f It is in play, which is 
his principal occupation, that he gives free scope to 
all his aptitudes. It is there that he shows us the 
most intimate dispositions of his soul. A complete 
history of the child's play would enable us to grasp, 
from day to day, the progressive development of all 
his, faculties. 

It is under the form of imitation that play, from 
the second year, is most attractive to the child. I 
Before he can imitate by himself, imitations, re- 
productions made by others — for instance, little 
wooden, leaden, or rubber animals — have an especial 

* Dr. Sikorski, Revue philosophique, August, 1885, 
+ " Play constitutes the most salient side of the child's life," 
says Dr. Sikorski, who has studied very minutely this part of the 
psychology of the child. (Rev. phil., vol. xix, p. 441.) 

X Livingstone says that the play of the children in the negro 
tribes of Africa consists usually of shooting and invading games, 
imitating the principal occupations of their fathers. 



144: LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

fitness for amnsing him. In this case, to understand 
the pleasure felt by the child, it is necessary to con- 
sider the fact that pictures, of whatever nature they 
may be, drawn and painted or roughly carved on 
cardboard, call up known objects, and excite the 
activity of the mind by calling forth a series of 
comparisons. The pleasure would be slight if the 
child were contented with looking at the animals 
that come out of his iN'oaVs ark. But it does not 
end here; he fondles them with secret pride, per- 
haps, in thinking that he can finally touch in their 
reduced and harmless forms the dog or the cat, 
which he loves so to see, but which, as yet, he does 
not dare to go near. Who can prove to us that 
these animals do not seem to him to be alive ? In 
any case, he sets his wits to work to make them 
stand up, to make them walk, to group them in 
herds ; in short, he makes them imitate the differ- 
ent acts of real animal life. 

Imitation inspires a great many of the plays. of 
childhood, but in amusements of this kind, as in all 
others, the activity put forth is the cause of the joy 
felt. To play with soldiers, or with dolls, to play 
at keeping house, later to play school, to snap the 
whip as the postillion does, to water as the gardener 
does — all these endless plays of the child, which 
have been found at all times and in all countries, 
all these diverting imitations of the serious matters 
of life, amuse because they bring action.* 

* In his book on Primitive Civilization, Tylor calls attention 
to the fact that imitative plays often survive the customs that 
they have copied ; for instance, the bow and arrow, the sling, and 
so on. 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITt 145 

However, there is something more in the purely- 
imitative plays : a touch of vanity, ambition satis- 
fied in aping grown people. On the other hand, all 
these childish pretendings are really little come- 
dies : they seem such to parents, who are the spec- 
tators, but the children themselves, also, in whom 
the sense of the comical is not altogether lacking, 
find a new element of pleasure in the very conscious- 
ness that there is something droll in their actions. 

It is not mere physical activity that causes the 
joy of play.* The sensibility comes early into the 
matter, at first under the form of social instinct. 
A play to which the child only now seemed indif- 
ferent, appears to charm and delight him as soon 
as there is some one to share it. It is not mere play 
that the child seeks ; it is the society of his play- 
mates, the prelude of friendship. By the side of 
the affectionate feelings, in these little societies of 
play, grow and develop, moreover, the personal 
feelings, rivalries, and ambitions. Playing is often, 
to the child, putting himself forward, asserting 
his superiority, proving his strength, and, finally, 
attesting his personality. If he likes boisterous, 
noisy amusements, the drum, for instance, and the 
horn — which Kant repudiates as disagreeable, and 
certainly the majority of parents are of his opinion 
— it is not exactly because his ear is charmed by all 
this noise; it is because the noise that he makes 
calls attention to himself, makes people notice him. 

* Dr. Sikorski goes so far as to claim, not without exaggera- 
tion, that " movement and gymnastics play a secondary and sub- 
ordinate part in the child's play, and serve only as instruments 
with which to realize intellectual conceptions." 



146 LAisE. INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

Other feelings are excited by playing with, the 
doll. A certain motherly affection shows itself in 
the little girl who, as the poet says, 

" Dreams of the name of mother as she rocks the baby doll." 

" What is a doll, if you please ? " wrote Hippo- 
lyte Rigault. " It is neither a thing nor an object, 
but a person ; it is the child of the child. By im- 
agination he lends it life, movement, action, respon- 
sibility. He governs it as he is governed by his 
parents ; he punishes it or rewards it according as 
the doll has been good or bad ; he imposes upon it 
the same discipline that he himself receives."* 
There is here, not as some surly minds contend, a 
ridiculous parody ; there is a charming rendition of 
the drama of motherhood, something quite different 
from the pleasure of playing with toys, little dresses, 
little hats, and bedizening the doll with them. The 
proof of this is the fact that the simplest doll — a 
two-cent doll — will amuse the child as much as a 
doll that is a masterpiece of art and of luxury. 

So when the child about three years old plays 
with his leaden soldiers, he does not enjoy them 
simply because he can arrange them, draw them 
up, make them go to battle, admire their beautiful 
colours ; perhaps when he pits the French against 
the Germans, and pretends that there are combats 
between them, a slight feeling of patriotism is 
already aroused in his little heart. f 

* H. Higault, Conversations litteraires et morales, new edition, 
1882, p. 5. 

f It is hard to see how a distinguished mind like Rigault could 
be so far misled as to criticise, as he has done in his charming ar- 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY' 147 

What there can be no doubt about is, that in 
these plays, as indeed in all the others, imagination 
is constantly at work, and the most amusing are 
those in which there is most to invent. The more 
elaborate playthings have jast this fault, that by 
their very perfection they hinder or render useless 
the work of childish imagination. The child is 
never happier than when he is planning his own 
games, when he is creating the material for them, 
when he makes a stick into a horse, a chair into a 
cart. " To create, to reproduce,^'' exclaimed Miche- 
let, " what happiness for the child ! '' And just as 
we have seen affectionate feelings, social feelings, 
and perhaps patriotic feelings, insinuating them- 
selves into play, so the feeling of beauty, of regular 
and symmetrical form, of the harmony of colours, 
sometimes creeps in. In any case, the child's imag- 
ination, considered as an sesthetic faculty, could be 
cultivated to advantage by a considerate education, 
which would show judgment and good taste in the 
choice of playthings. "People believe that they 
have done everything," said Rigault, "when they 
have invented playthings that amuse children with- 
out hurting them. This is not enough. Even babies 
are farther advanced than these people think. They 
have mind before they can speak ; their eyes per- 
ceive the different forms of objects, even when they 

tide on the Playthings of Children (written in 1858), what he 
called the " military monomania of children." One cannot read 
without bitterness, since 1870, the passages in which he vented his 
spite against these plays, which " make a corporal of the child," 
and in which he said ironically : " Prussia is decidedly the first 
military power for the leaden soldiers ! " 



148 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

wander about without seeming capable of fixing 
themselves on any object ; their ears are already- 
sensitive to differences of sound, even when they do 
not seem to recognise the mother- voice.* "What is 
the first plaything that people put into their hands ? 
A rattle. I have seen charming ivory ones, silver 
ones, gilt ones, carved with exquisite art, but I de- 
clare that the most beautiful rattle is revolting to 
me. I do not complain, with Addison, that in giv- 
ing the child the habit of moving and of shaking, 
the rattle develops the faculties of motion at the 
expense of the faculties of thought. Man is born to 
act, and there is no harm in early accustoming him 
to action. But why do they nearly always make 
this metal man, the child's first friend, a deformed 
being, hunchbacked before and behind, with a mouth 
that gapes, a nose that bends over and joins the 
chin ? The first imitation of Nature that strikes the 
child's eyes is a monster. He makes the acquaint- 
ance of art through the medium of the ugly."f 

Other intellectual faculties are associated with 
imagination in directing the child's play. There is 
no doubt but that some instinct of investigation 
and research, a tendency to experiment, presides 
over certain of the child's plays. | It is this desire 
to know that the baby obeys when he rips open his 

* Rigault forces things somewhat. 

•f- H. Rigault, op. cit., p. 2. 

If. It is not necessary, however, to exaggerate and to say, for in- 
stance, with Dr. Sikorski, that when the child is put into the bath 
with his toys, and amuses himself by plunging the floating bodies 
into the water, and, on the contrary, by making heavy bodies swim, 
he is "studying the hydrostatic properties of his toys." 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY I49 

dolls, or takes his carriage apart to find out how it 
is made. But let us guard against seeing intellec- 
tual aspiration where there is only a muscular agita- 
tion. It would not be necessary to explain, as Kant 
did, for instance, that children love so to play blind- 
man's-buff because they have a desire to know how 
they could help themselves if they were deprived of 
one of their senses. Things are simpler than that; 
play is above all a need of expansion, of motion — in 
a word, of action. It is true that to understand is 
even now an act, and that is why instructive games, 
which, however, must not be abused, have very 
early a certain charm for the child. 

The ideal of play would be a diversion that would 
associate at once the different activities of human 
nature, that would at least exercise a physical and 
a moral faculty at the same time. Indeed, there is 
always something intellectual even in the exercises 
that seem purely physical. Sometimes the physical 
factor is reduced to a minimum, as in the play that 
consists in placing blocks of wood one on top of the 
other, in making little constructions of one sort or 
another. In these there is hardly any motion, the 
ruling activity being the geometric thought, the 
seeking for well-ordered forms, at least the will to 
make by himself a work of some sort. So in the 
absorbing recreation that consists in throwing stones 
into the water or in blowing soap-bubbles. At 
other times, on the contrary, it is the physical ac- 
tivity that outstrips all the other elements of play, 
for instance, when the child plays ball or rolls a 
hoop. 

Not only has the child the instinct of construe- 



150 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

tion in his play, but he shows also a mania for 
destruction. Goethe gives an amusing example of 
this in his Memoirs. " There was a pottery mart 
near by, and not only had they furnished the kitch- 
en with this ware, but they had bought miniature 
utensils as playthings for us. One beautiful after- 
noon, when all was quiet in the house, I was amus- 
ing myself on the balcony with my plates and my 
pots. As I did not know what pleasure further I 
could derive from them, I threw one of these play- 
things into the street, and found it very amusing 
to see it break into such queer pieces. The Ochsen- 
steins, who saw how this amused me, for I clapped 
my hands in my joy, cried out, ' More ! more ! ' I 
did not hesitate, and quickly went another pot. 
And as they did not cease trying ^More!" all the 
little plates, the little stoves, the little pots, were 
thrown one after the other on to the pavement. 
My neighbours continued to show their approba- 
tion, and I was delighted to give them pleasure. 
But my provisions were exhausted, and still they 
cried ' More ! ' I then ran straight to the kitchen, 
and I took the earthen plates, which naturally 
offered more amusement in breaking ; I came and 
I went, I brought the plates, one after the other, as 
I could reach them on the shelf, and as these gen- 
tlemen seemed never to be satisfied, I threw into 
the same ruins all the breakable objects that I could 
drag thither. Some one came finally, but it was 
then too late to stop me." 

In this fury of destruction, in which Goethe as 
a child showed as much spirit as he later put into 
his dramas, it is physical joy that predominates. But 



THE VOLUNTARY ACTIVITY 151 

a part also must be assigned to the pleasure of mak- 
ing something delightful to others, of astonishing, 
of exciting laughter. The child very early has the 
sense of a joke. To see him watering without water 
in the watering-pot, drinking from an empty cup, 
one might be inclined to believe that he is naively 
deceiving himself. But do not believe this. It is 
plain to be seen that there is here for him only a 
play of imagination, that he is amusing himself by 
a pure comedy. 

IPlay being the all-important business of childish 
life, and all play consisting more or less in acts, it 
is in play then, above all, that we must seek for the 
beginnings of voluntary activity. Its intervention 
has probably been recognised more than once in 
the different pictures that we have traced. Even 
in purely physical play, it is will that enables the 
child to co-ordinate his movements, to make them 
appropriate to the actions that he performs. But 
it is above all in the play where intelligence has a 
part — which is often real research, as in the little 
solutions of problems which the child asks himself, 
and which he solves — that the directing power of 
the will is revealed, guided, it is true, and upheld 
by charm and by pleasure. We cannot repeat too 
often that play is a serious thing to the child ; not 
only a pastime and a distraction, but an intellectual 
work, and consequently a school of thought and of 
will. Play is the child^s study, in the strict sense 
of the word. "Play," says Guyau, "is the first 
work of little children. It permits us to judge of 
their character, to develop it in the direction of 
perseverance and of active energy." The difference 



152 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

in natures shows itself here, some having remark- 
able ardour, energy, and will ; others letting us see, 
even now, the weakness of their characters, their 
apathy, and, in a word, their idleness, which quali- 
ties do not wait until the entrance into school and 
the first lessons in reading before showing them- 
selves. 



CHAPTER V 

DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL SENSE 

L Evolution of moral ideas. — Influence of surroundings and of 
education on the development of the moral consciousness. — 
Circumstances of education most often explain gaps in the 
moral sense. IL Affectionate feelings the starting-point of 
moral evolution. — Fear of parents. — Paternal or maternal 
will the first rule of morality. — The child's instinctive tend- 
ency to bend before the law. — We find nothing in the little 
child resembling real morality. — His acts show only that he 
fears punishment. III. Affection follows egoism. — Sympathy 
a principle of moral direction in the child. — The provisional 
phases of nascent morality in the child may remain all his 
life definitive states of morality. IV. The organization of the 
moral sense presupposes a multitude of progressive steps. — The 
child at first conceives of morality only as a personal rule that 
applies only to himself. — He confounds rules of action with 
the will of his parents. — A series of experiences is necessary to 
form the abstract idea of good and evil. — The performance 
of good actions prepares for the development of the idea of the 
good.— The morality of interest, the morality of feeling, show 
themselves in the child's actions. — Appreciation of the conse- 
quences of actions, whether good or bad. V. The idea of 
moral law. — Education of conscience. — A defect of education 
results in a defect in the moral sense. 



The history of the evolution of moral ideas in 
the child's consciousness is most complicated and 

153 



154 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

most delicate. Psycliologists who study only the 
adult consciousness, who consider only the higher 
forms of morality, who, in a word, begin with the 
end, have a comparatively easy task. They distin- 
guish two or three ideas, very distinct, very clear : 
goodness, duty, responsibility; they describe the 
feelings that accompany these ideas, and that done, 
all is said. Everything seems simple in the con- 
sciousness of a Socrates, of a Franklin, or of any 
reflective man, just as all is bright and clear on 
the highest ridge of mountains, although it has 
been necessary, in scaling them, to go through the 
darkness of fogs and of clouds, to pass over wind- 
ing paths, and to climb steep ascents. 

But if the moral consciousness stands out in 
characters clear and distinct, in the light of a rea- 
son ripened by age and by experience, what diffi- 
culties do we not encounter during the period of 
growth and of formation, the slow moral evolution, 
the obscure emotional and intellectual work from 
which, little by little, the real moral sense will 
emerge ? 

However disposed we may be to grant much to 
what is innate or hereditary, for the moral faculties 
as for all the others, perhaps nowhere better than 
here does the influence of education and of social 
surroundings show itself. The moral conscious- 
ness is not a pure gift of nature, a natural force 
organized in a trice, as the strict naturalists or 
the philosophers of the school of evolution claim. 
Herbert Spencer, for instance, admits "veritable 
moral intuitions " ; he speaks of emotions that cor- 
respond immediately to good or to bad conduct, which 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL SEXSE I55 

would be the result of nervous modifications, them- 
selves produced by the experiences of our ances- 
tors, and slowly consolidated through all the past 
generations of the human race. To this Renouvier 
rightly answers : " We know from the observation 
of childhood, by experience of the effects of educa- 
tion, that heredity furnishes to the nascent man no 
fixed determination of good and bad acts/' * The 
moral consciousness is in great part an acquired 
faculty, which is formed little by little, which de- 
velops only under certain conditions, undergoing 
many metamorphoses, at the price of a laborious 
birth, and which in its beginnings does not in the 
least resemble what it will be in its final state. 
Moreover, it is not an exclusively personal acquisi- 
tion, in which the spontaneity of the individual, 
limited to his own forces, can be sufficient unto 
itself; more than any other of our faculties, it 
needs the concurrence of outward influences ; it 
presupposes action, the fruitful stimulation of the 
human medium; it is communicated to us, suggest- 
ed by our parents and by our teachers. The moral 
sense, in a word, is not merely the individual con- 
tribution of every intelligence entering the world ; 
it is still more the product of civilization and of 
education, a consequence of social life, a sort of 
favour that comes to us from without. 

" The development of the intellect," says Preyer, 
" depends in so great measure upon the modifica- 
tion of innate endowments through natural envi- 
ronment and education, and the methods of educa- 

* Critique philosophique, 1875, ii, p. 324. 



156 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

tion are so manifold, that it is impossible to make 
a complete exposition of a normal intellectual 
development."* Though perhaps questionable in 
what concerns the intellect, Preyer^s reflection is 
exact if applied to the moral sense, the regular 
elaboration of which a multitude of causes may 
modify and trouble. So many preliminary opera- 
tions are equally necessary in forming the con- 
science, the moral sense is composed of elements so 
diverse, it depends on a framework so laboriously 
constructed, it is so delicate an adjustment of pieces 
borrowed successively from the different parts of 
our mental organism, that the world of real chil- 
dren, subject to the caprice of so many different 
educations, seldom furnishes an example of the 
evolution of the moral sense that is complete and 
satisfying in every way. 

This is why the world of men, in its turn, shows 
us so many moral natures that stumble and are not 
to be depended upon, or are imperfect in some way. 
Either the conscience is fragile, subject to weak- 
nesses, because the many conditions that ought to 
assure its development have not marked their suc- 
cessive imprints strongly enough on the child's soul, 
or one of the essential elements is lacking, because in 
the progressive series of feelings and of ideas from 
which the moral being is evolved, a step has been 
omitted or passed over too quickly. One man, for 
instance, will have a proud feeling of justice; 
iniquity will draw from him cries of sincere indig- 
nation ; but he will have no notion of the govern- 



* Development of the Intellect, p. 1. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL SENSE I57 

ment to be applied to his own passions. Another 
will be an irreproachable follower of the law, but 
he will never know warmth of affection, or devo- 
tion to others. If we looked carefully, we should 
always find in the child's life, in the particular cir- 
cumstances of his education — the mother absent 
or lacking in tenderness, the father without au- 
thority, isolation from or neglect of all social rela- 
tions, etc. — the reason for these moral insufficiencies 
and gaps. 

There is, then, great interest in following step by 
step the child^s little desires, which may give birth 
to the moral will, if it were only for the purpose of 
showing how education, and above all personal 
effort, can in adolescence and in maturity repair 
the mistakes committed in childhood. How, in 
this whirl of capricious desires, of disordered, 
changeable impulses, which characterize the first 
years, do we see obedience to law appearing, en- 
tirely outward law at first, which is confounded 
with the people who command, who give orders to 
the child! How shall we see the disinterested 
pleasure of being good merely for the sake of being 
good, substituted little by little for the egoism that 
suggests merely obedience ? By what secret process 
does law, vested at first only in parents, become the 
notion or the feeling of an inner obligation, the 
abstract idea of duty and of law? This is what 
we ought to learn by observing the child from the 
cradle. 



13 



158 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

II 

It is in tlie different emotional states that we 
must look for the starting-point of the moral evolu- 
tion. Of all that developed reason can comprehend 
of virtue and of striving after the right, of all that 
the conscience of a Kant, for instance, contains of 
moral beauty, the first beginning is this simple fact, 
that, being naturally sensitive to fear and to pain, 
the little child represses his tears and his cries 
before the threatening manifestations of his par- 
ents' will. " A man incapable, by hypothesis, of 
feeling pleasure or pain," says Ribot, " would be 
incapable of attention." He would be still more 
incapable of exercising the moral sense. 

The first form of moral consciousness, then, is 
the fear of paternal or maternal authority. Almost 
everybody agrees in recognising this. The right, 
in the first conception of the very little child, is 
simply what is ordered or permitted ; the wrong, 
what is forbidden. Preyer, who, moreover, has 
devoted only a few lines to the question that oc- 
cupies us now, finds that in the middle of the sec- 
ond year the consciousness of good and evil — that is 
to say, of what is forbidden — has already been ac- 
quired for some time.* So Sully says that the child's 
repugnance for doing wrong is simply the egoistic 
feeling that causes him to dislike or to fear punish- 
ment, f To be very exact, we should say that wrong 
for the child is less the prohibition made by parents 

* Development of the Intellect, p. 13, 
f Sully, op. cit., p. 560. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL SENSE I59 

than tlie disagreeable consequences to whicli lie 
exposes himself if he disobeys. 

So, at the age when the child is not yet capable 
of understanding the meaning of an order or of a 
prohibition, the education of the moral sense has 
already begun, simply because the people that sur- 
round him have set in opposition to his caprices 
the mute and inflexible resistance of their will. 
We have seen a mother induce her baby not to 
waken her again during the night, and not even 
awaken himself to be nursed, simply by not yield- 
ing to his demands and so showing him the useless- 
ness of his cries. The operation was a painful one, 
and called for some patience ; it was the father who 
really carried it through, by taking the child for 
several nights in succession into his own room. It 
is in this sense only, and for a very short time, that 
we can accept and apply the maxim that Rousseau 
wrongly wished to extend beyond the first months, 
which consists in making the child^s blind desires 
bend before necessity. As soon as possible, the will 
that orders, as later the will that advises, should be 
substituted for the necessity involved ; people can 
never begin too early to talk to the child of his 
duty. 

But we have not gone so far as that yet. The 
first lessons in morality are given by the imperative 
will of parents. Moreover, it is not necessary that 
this will, in order to be obeyed, should arm itself 
with a long train of punishments, of which there 
can be no question in the case of a child only just 
born ; it is enough for the will to show itself. 
Where is the father who has not found that merely 



160 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

by raising his voice, by looking grave or severe, he 
can often, if not always, overcome the little unruli- 
ness of the young child, provided, however, that he 
begins this at the outset, at the very first appear- 
ance of the acts that he wishes to repress ? 

The child has a stock of natural docility which, 
so to speak, forestalls the rules laid down for him, a 
sort of instinctive fear which it is necessary to treat 
with discretion, moreover, if one wishes to avoid 
the risk of developing a servile character. The 
demands of moral education would not be heard as 
they are if they did not meet in the child's nature 
an unconscious and dormant instinct which has 
only to be lighted up and awakened. This instinct 
is not exclusively the feeling of weakness in the 
presence of force ; it is a special disposition that 
nature transmits to the child, strengthened, if not 
created, by moral habits, by the virtuous efforts of 
our ancestors. " The civilized child," wrote Guyau, 
" instead of being, like the savage, without law, 
without restraint, is all ready to receive the yoke 
of the law. Education finds in him a sort of pre- 
established legality, a natural loyalty." * Such is 
the opinion of Sully and also of Egger. " The 
child shows very early a disposition to submit to 
the authority of another, and this moral instinct is 
probably only the hereditary result of the social 
experience and of the moral culture of several gen- 
erations." (Sully.) " There is no doubt but that, 
in a civilized society like ours, education greatly 
aids the reason of childhood, but it is still more 

* Guyau, Education et heredite, p. 79. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL SENSE 161 

evident that the child has a natural tendency to fol- 
low the lessons given him on this point." (Egger.) 

Whether by ever-present instinct or hereditary 
acquisition, it is an incontrovertible fact, in any 
case, that the child willingly bends before the law 
that his imagination vests at first in the will of his 
parents. So true is this, that the child soon comes to 
wish to apply the law, not only to himself, but to 
others. At twenty-three months, Tiedemann^s son 
came into a part of the house where he had been 
punished the week before for having soiled the floor; 
without any other provocation, he immediately said 
that whoever should soil that room would be 
whipped. The child very soon generalizes ; little 
by little the idea of law becomes distinct in his 
mind from the consideration of the people who 
represent it in his eyes. Even in the absence of his 
father and his mother he will accustom himself to 
conform to it ; witness the child observed by 
Preyer, who at thirty-two months could not see his 
nurse disregard the prohibitions that had been 
made for him, and would never consent to see her 
eat with her knife, without protesting vigorously.* 

However important these first dispositions of 
the child may be for the future acquisition of moral 
distinctions, it is impossible to see in them any- 
thing really resembling the moral sense. It all 
amounts to an impulse towards obedience, or to the 
association that is established in the child's mind 
between certain acts and the disagreeable results 
of these acts. The principle of association is so 

* Development of the Intellect, p. 20. 



162 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

strong, moreover, that the child who begins by 
fearing and disliking punishments, the expected 
and foreseen consequences of his faults, ends by 
detesting the faults themselves. 

It would then be an abuse of words to attribute 
the moral sense, as Preyer does, for instance, to the 
very young child. Perez seems to reproach himself 
for granting too much, for making the measure too 
short, in fixing the first awakening of the moral 
sense at six or seven months. " The entirely objec- 
tive notion of good and bad, the intellectual germ 
of the moral sense, cannot assert itself," he says, 
"before the age of six or seven months."* Dar- 
win, too, though disposed to exaggerate in the case 
of children as in that of animals, declares that he 
did not see the moral sense in his son until towards 
the age of thirteen months. But we do not insist on 
a few months more or less, for we are convinced 
that neither at two years nor at three, nor even 
much later, is the child really in a state to distin- 
guish between right and wrong. In order to be- 
lieve him capable of morality, it would be necessary 
to accept at the same time a definition that would 
weaken and restrict our idea of morality, and an 
illusory interpretation of certain acts of childish 
life. What, indeed, are the examples reported by 
Darwin or by Perez ? When Doddy was two years 
seven months and a half old, his father met him 
coming out of the dining-room. " I noticed," says 
Darwin, " that his eyes were brighter than usual, 
and there was something affected and strange in 

* Perez, op. cit., p. 335. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL SENSE 163 

his wKole attitude. I went into the dining-room to 
see what was the matter, and saw that the little 
rogue had been taking powdered sugar, something 
that he had been forbidden to do. As he had never 
received the slightest punishment, his manner cer- 
tainly could not have been the result of fear, and I 
believe that it must be attributed to the struggle 
between the pleasure of eating the sugar and the 
beginning of remorse.^'' I notice that in order to 
justify his conclusion, Darwin takes care to observe 
that Doddy had never been punished ; but Doddy 
was not ignorant of the fact that he had been for- 
bidden to eat sugar, and he had doubtless found 
that to every command violated by him, corre- 
sponded at least his father's displeasure, and the 
lack of his usual caresses. So Doddy, surprised in 
the very act of his offence, was disturbed simply 
because he feared to fall into disgrace.* Perhaps, 
also, he foresaw that it would not be possible to 
get another chance to satisfy his gluttony. Thus 
Tiedemann^s son, seventeen months old, hid himself 

* It would be enough to convince us that the child in a case of 
this sort gives absolutely no proof of a moral sense, to recall an 
anecdote entirely analogous, but borrowed from animal life. 
Romanes, in his book on Animal Intelligence, tells of the conduct 
of a dog that had never stolen but once in his life. One day when 
he was very hungry he took a chop from the table and retired with 
it under a sofa. His master appearing to pay no attention to him, 
the culprit stayed under the sofa for several minutes, divided 
between the desire to satisfy his hunger and the feeling of duty ; 
but the latter triumphed in the end, and the dog dropped the 
stolen chop at his master's feet. What gives an especial value to 
this example, adds the author, is the fact that the dog in question 
had never been whipped. 



164 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

to eat sugar, not, assuredly, from a feeling of 
shame, but in order not to be disturbed. 

The facts cited by Perez are of the same kind. 
A child of eleven months obeyed when his father 
raised his voice and said severely, " Be still ! '' He 
did not want to walk alone yet, but they made him 
take several steps by showing him a dainty. A 
strong prejudice in favour of that view is necessary 
before one will permit himself to apply the adjec- 
tive moral to actions in which there is shown only 
the desire of a material satisfaction, or perhaps the 
fear of pain, associated by the memory with such 
and such act; at the very least, a distinction be- 
tween paternal caresses and threats. The associa- 
tion of ideas and memory, added to an egoistic 
sensibility, conscious of pleasure and of pain — this 
does much towards explaining the relative obedi- 
ence that one gets from a child naturally timid, 
and we refuse absolutely to believe that a baby is 
in possession of a moral sense as soon as he obeys 
from habit or from fear. 

Ill 

It is not, we hasten to say, egoism alone that 
appears in the preliminary period of the evolution 
of the moral sense. Another element — affection — 
soon insinuates itself as a new stitch in the still 
loosely woven web of the child's emotions. Soon 
after the first smile has lighted up his face, the 
child is capable of loving those who take care of 
him. And in this second step of the moral devel- 
opment, the good, so far as it is vaguely conceived, 
is for the child what is agreeable to the people 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL SENSE 1^5 

that he loves ; the bad is what disappoints them 
and gives them pain. Being already anxious to 
avoid a fault because it will bring its punishment, 
or to obey a given order because a reward attends 
it, the little being that is advancing towards moral- 
ity feels himself fortified in his resolutions by the 
instinctive sympathy that attaches him to his father 
and his mother, by the confidence and the faith that 
they inspire in him. By virtue of the laws of asso- 
ciation, as before, if the child begins by hating or 
by desiring the disappointment or the joy that his 
good or his bad actions cause for those he loves, he 
comes from this to hate or to like these actions in 
themselves, for themselves. 

Facts, authentic observations, abound to prove 
this role of sympathy, of nascent affection. Little 
Betty, aged three, observed by L. Ferri, said to her 
mother, who praised her for her good conduct, 
"Mamma, I should like to make you still more 
pleased; I should like to be good always."* To 
this child, being good was pleasing her mother. 
" The desire to satisfy me," said Mme. Guizot, in 
speaking of little Sophia, " was strong enough in 
her at seven years to make her alive to her slightest 
faults." f "I have watched a little child," said 
Mme. decker de Saussure, "who, having seen an 
expression of dissatisfaction in her mother's eyes, 
without being threatened or even scolded, gave up 
her play, and, with a heart full of sobs, went to 

* L. Ferri, Observations on a Child, in Filosofia delle seuole 
italiane, October-December, 1881. 

t Mme. Giiizot, Lettres de famille sur reducation, edition of 
1888, Didier, vol. i, p. 90. 



1QQ LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

hide in a dark corner, her face to the wall." * A 
mother will succeed in curing her children of idle- 
ness, of heedlessness, simply by threatening to 
make them work away from her, under the super- 
vision of some one of whom they are not so fond. 
The sadness of a father will often suffice to make 
little culprits wish to repair their faults. And if 
affection begins by provoking simply the aversion 
for what is forbidden by parents, it very soon be- 
comes active ; it suggests to the child all sorts of 
efforts to satisfy parents and lead to their favour, so 
that the father and the mother may never have to 
complain of him, to suffer because of him. 

The facts that we have cited belong to a some- 
what more advanced period in the child's life, but 
it is not impossible to find, as early as the second 
year, analogous manifestations of the affectionate 
sensibility. " It was at the age of about thirteen 
months," says Darwin, " that I found in my child 
the awakening of the moral sense. I said to him 
one day, ' Doddy will not give a kiss to his poor 
papa! Doddy naughty P These words doubtless 
made him ill at ease, and when I had sat down 
again, he put out his lips to indicate that he wanted 
to kiss me; then he moved his hand as though 
he were sorry, until I went to receive his kiss." 
Doddy's supposed moral sense was assuredly noth- 
ing more than a feeling of tenderness, the need so 
noticeable in some children, of wheedling their 
parents and of responding to their caresses. It is 

* Mrae. Necker de Saussure, FEducation progressive, vol. iii, 
chap. ii. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL SENSE 167 

the same in the case that Tiedemann reports con- 
cerning his son in the fifteenth month. " He wept 
because the hand tliat he loved to give as a sign of 
affection was repulsed/' Tiedemann interprets this 
little act in this way, and even considers it as a 
precocious revelation of the feeling of honour; it 
is more exact to see in it nothing but an act of 
affection. 

Yery early, then, we can recognise the child's 
tendency to sympathize with the people that are 
familiar to him. I have noted in my journal of 
education that, from the first months, one of my 
children yielded to the influence of a soft, caressing 
tone, and also that when he awakened in the night, 
ready to make trouble if left too long alone, he 
was quieted if I approached him, if I made him 
feel the touch of my hand by taking his, or by rest- 
ing my fingers lightly on his forehead. The child 
appreciates the presence of a protector, of a friend, 
earlier than people think ; he rejoices in it, and 
this is the obscure beginning of the affection with 
which he will soon respond to the affection shown 
him. 

Moreover, we cannot ignore the fact that in the 
soul of the child, as in that of the adult, the most 
unlike elements are mingled and confused to form 
emotions apparently simple, but really complex. 
All children lot^e their mother's caresses, but they 
do not seek them for a single motive ; they desire 
them at first as egoists, because they bring pleasure 
to themselves, and because, in order to be happy, 
they need to live in an atmosphere of peace and of 
tenderness ; but they solicit them also from a disin- 



168 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

terested impulse, because they vaguely understand 
that caresses are not less agreeable to those who 
give them than to those who receive them, and they 
see in them the proof that they themselves have 
given their parents nothing to complain of. 

" Not all the delicacy of the moral sense is the 
product of education and the privilege of a more 
advanced age," says Egger, and to prove this he 
calls up those little family scenes that we have all 
known in which the child of four or five years, 
when scolded and reprimanded, suddenly redoubles 
his gentleness and his amiability, " as if to make us 
forget the sorrow that he has caused by liis way- 
wardness. . . . Never," adds Egger, "is the child 
gayer than after these little storms." It is because 
the child wants to return to favour, and being de- 
prived for an instant of the moral well-being that 
his habitual accord with the will of his parents 
brings him, he hastens to restore himself to this 
moral accord so as to be admitted anew to a part in 
his beloved caresses. 

It would be an exaggeration to speak in such a 
case of "remorse," and of the "instinct of repara- 
tion." We cannot say too emphatically that it is 
chimerical to try to find in the child the signs of a 
real moral sense. People must not be deceived by 
apparent analogies existing between distinctly de- 
fined states of the developed conscience and the 
vague and indistinct equivalents, which are only 
shadows in the nascent conscience. 

However this may be, the child has taken a long 
step forward when, being still non-rational, but al- 
ready provided with an emotional nature, he raises 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL SENSE 169 

hiinself from his instinctive egoism to disinter- 
ested feelings. As soon as there is an exchange of 
sympathy and affection between child and parent, 
between pupil and teacher, we may say that the 
cause of morality is gained ; and during childhood, 
at least, affection will remain the great means of 
moral education. A writer of talent, whose ro- 
mances often have all the exactness of things seen 
and lived, Fr^ddrika Bremer, makes one of her 
heroines say : " It sometimes occurs to me, when I 
do not know what else to do, to grasp the culprit 
child in my arms, to weep with him, with all my 
heart, or when he is good to embrace him joyful- 
ly ; usually these means are not without their 
effect." * 

Moreover, how many people there are who re- 
main children on this point all their lives ! It is to 
be noticed that in their insufficient and incomplete 
morality many people never go beyond one or 
another of the transitory stages that we are de- 
scribing ; what ought to be only a provisional phase 
becomes the final form of their imperfect moral 
sense. It is thus that fear of punishment and 
the selfish respect for outward law sum up the 
moral code of a large part of humanity. On a 
higher plane, the desire to be agreeable or useful 
to others, the wish to do them good, a larger gener- 
alization of the instinct that impels the child to 
satisfy his parents, remains the sole principle of 
virtue for certain delicate and sensitive natures. 
" If I only do good to some one I am happy," wrote 

* Frederika Bremer, Le Foyer domestique. 



170 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

Legouve recently. " If I do wrong to any one I feel 
remorse and suffering. I need no other rule of 
life/'* 

IV 

Egoistic morality, the result of fear and of natu- 
ral docility, and the morality of sympathy, these 
are the first two principles of the child's distinction 
between right and wrong. And these two act to- 
gether, the one depending on the other, even before 
the child knows how to talk, before the words right 
and wrong, good and bad, can be effectively mur- 
mured in his ear, or his lips repeat them with any 
meaning whatever attached to them. 

One of the difficulties of infant psychology, as 
we must not forget, is that in describing the little, 
vague, half -conscious acts that are observed, we are 
necessarily obliged to depend on words of precise 
meaning, and hence to translate these facts inex- 
actly, to exaggerate them, in lending them a con- 
sistency which in reality they do not have. It goes 
without saying that the language we use can ex- 
press only with some inexactness phenomena as 
yet hardly sketched, conceptions more like dreams 
than like consciousness, which in the child's soul 
do not take a form definite enough, or precise 
enough, to come out in verbal expressions. To 
confine to categories the floating, uncertain, incon- 
sistent movements of the childish sensibility is like 
trying to weigh a passing breeze, to grasp in the 
hand the vanishing smoke. The beginning, the 

* Legouve, Fleurs d'hiver, Fruits d'hiver, 1890, p. 44. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MOEAL SENSE 171 

organization of the moral sense, presupposes a mul- 
titude of imperceptible advances, of little hidden 
shades, light vapours that are condensed only little 
by little ; a whole series of dark, mysterious mo- 
tives, which reveal themselves outwardly only by 
sudden flashes. 

At the moment to which we have come, the 
child's morality is entirely personal; I mean that 
the child conceives only by relation to himself, the 
little that he has caught sight of in the moral world. 
It is of himself alone that he is capable of saying, 
when he can speak, " Baby is a good boy V or, accord- 
ing to the case, " Baby is bad/' Having no idea, 
no experience of society, he does not yet imagine 
that others can be governed as he himself is, by 
fear and by affection, and that under the sway of 
these feelings they obey active impulses towards 
the right, first images of future obligation and of 
individual responsibility. 

On the other hand, in his naive conception of 
law, first sketch of the idea of a moral law, he con- 
siders only the real and living will of his parents. 
He identifies the law with their persons to the very 
letter, or at least with one of them, the most feared 
or the most loved, the one whose authority is better 
established, or whose tenderness is more appreciated. 
It is not only figuratively that we can say of the 
child obeying his father or his mother, " The father 
or the mother is his conscience/' In his imagina- 
tion, the law is not distinguished from the person 
that represents and applies it. Moreover, this sin- 
cere and complete illusion will not surprise any one 
who reflects that by an analogous confusion, even 



172 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

for many intelligences arrived at the maturity of 
their reason, the good is God, the divine being 
Himself, the heavenly Father. The morality of 
pious souls is often only obedience to and faith in 
a supreme being, conceived as omnipotent, who 
commands and forbids, rewards and punishes, who 
is an object both of fear and of love. 

It is going a little too far, then, to say, as does 
Mme. N"ecker de Saussure, in the beginning of 
the chapter entitled Conscience Before the Age of 
Four : " At three years the child has a lively idea 
of right and of wrong, although he does not express 
it in general terms. He recognises a law binding 
to all, a tacit convention that must be respected/'' 
And she adds that for this it is necessary only that 
his attention shall be drawn to it. This amounts to 
saying that if the child could return into himself, 
could be cool-headed, could rule the bad feelings 
that draw him away, he would then hear in his 
heart the voice of conscience, and be able to pro- 
claim himself well acquainted with good and evil. 

No, it is not by inspiration, by inner illumina- 
tion, so to speak, that moral distinctions advance, 
as is wrongly imagined by the philosophers that ex- 
aggerate the part of innate tendency, or at least fail 
to recognise how necessary is the excitation from 
without in developing inner dispositions. In order 
that the first faint lights may be made bright, that 
the original impulses may unite and strengthen, 
that the general idea of right and wrong may be 
separated by successive abstractions from the con- 
crete and entirely personal representations, it is 
necessary that the child should pass through a 



DEVELOPMENT OP THE MORAL SENSE 173 

series of experiences^, and that being nrged on by 
circumstances, his reflection should extend and his 
sensibility grow.* 

Notice this first of all : if, when once formed, 
the moral consciousness becomes the higher prin- 
ciple of virtuous actions, one of the sources of prac- 
tical morality, virtuous actions, in their turn, may 
be considered as one of the origins of the moral 
consciousness. I mean that by the habitual, or even 
the accidental, practice of right, the moral sense de- 
velops and purifies itself. Between moral beliefs and 
the performance of duty there is the same relation 
that exists in general between faith and practice. 
Have the faith, and you will act ; but it is none the 
less true to say, act, and by the effect of your action 
you will see the faith that you already had increas- 
ing, and even what you did not have, appearing. 
Even as grown men, we have not really a clear 
intuition of moral ideas, except when circumstances 
have compelled us to perform some of the great 
duties of life — the duties of paternity, for instance, 
or those of patriotism. In the modest sphere of his 

* It is evident that the good is at first only a relative notion in 
the conscience ; good things, in the child's eyes, are good things 
relatively to his own interests, to his needs, to his aflEections. The 
good is only the supreme abstraction, which will slowly become 
clear in the developed conscience. How people deceive themselves 
on this point ! They say, for instance, with Mr. F. Hement (Entre- 
tiens sur la liberte de conscience, p. 18) : " With the awakening of 
conscience we distinguish our good and our bad actions ; the first 
seem to us to merit praise, and so on." This is reversing the order 
of things. The praise, on the contrary, is the point of departure ; 
little by little the child becomes accustomed to consider as good 
actions those that are praised by his parents. 
14 



174 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

actions, then, how much, more does the child need 
the frequent stimulus of obligation to do right, in 
order that the idea of the good, of the right may 
be clearly fixed in his intelligence ! In making him 
obey rules, not only do you obtain an immediate 
gain in outward discipline, but you institute, with- 
out suspecting it, a series of experiences of the 
same nature, the echo of which fixes in the child's 
brain, little by little, the notion of what he ought 
to do if he wishes to merit your affection and your 
praise. 

This notion is as a fixed point, around which the 
emotions and the later affections will group them- 
selves to strengthen it and to determine it, little by 
little. At first there will be the pleasure that the 
child will find in feeling himself in accord with the 
will of his parents ; afterward there will be his self- 
esteem, the desire to be appreciated and praised. 
And if he comes spontaneously to perform an act 
of generosity, of liberality that was not demanded 
of him, but of which he reads the approbation in 
the eyes of his parents, the satisfaction of his little 
conscience will exalt him and will arouse his desire 
to do right. Look at Doddy, Darwin^s son, who, 
when hardly two years and three months old, gave 
his last piece of spiced cake to his little sister ; with 
what an air of triumph he cried : " Oh, Doddy good, 
Doddy good ! " 

The motive of interest, the motive of sentiment, 
has already begun to exist in the obedience of the 
child that tries, from fear or from affection, to regu- 
late his conduct. But in order that the notion of 
utility should be clearly formed, that the affec- 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL SENSE 175 

tionate feeling should acquire more strength, it is 
indispensable that the child, having become more 
reflective towards the age of three or four years, 
should render to himself better account of the con- 
sequences of his actions, and of the actions of 
others; it is indispensable, moreover, that social 
relations, especially daily intercourse with other 
children of the same age, should give sympathy 
greater occasion for exercising itself. Of course 
we do not claim that in the case of an isolated child, 
one who -has neither brother nor sister, who has no 
playmates, the acquisition of the moral sense would 
be an impossible thing ; but it would certainly be 
slower and more laborious. 

Social life, under its childish forms, is certainly 
a school of morality. In playing freely with his 
companions of the same age with himself, the child 
learns their good qualities and their faults, and ex- 
periences by himself the effects of their kindness or 
of their naughtiness. A great advance will have 
been made when he will say, not merely speaking 
of himself, "Baby bad!'' but, speaking of his 
brother or of his sister, "Paul bad!" "Martha 
bad I '' and that, not because Paul and Martha have 
disobeyed their parents, as he disobeyed them, too, 
but because Paul has given him a blow that hurt 
him, because Martha has taken a cake or a play- 
thing away from him, the loss of which he feels 
acutely. The profit will be the same, in the oppo- 
site case, if he has to do with gentle and gener- 
ous comrades, who do little favours for him, who 
complacently divide with him all that they possess. 
It is not only a disposition to gratitude or to an- 



176 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

ger, according to tlie case, tliat will be implanted 
in the consciousness ; it will be also, provided these 
experiences are frequently repeated, a tendency to 
understand the relation of dependence, which con- 
nects the actions of others with his own happiness, 
and consequently to appreciate by their effects, 
though only in a utilitarian sense, the unkindness 
or the kindness of others. 

These vague conceptions will become more dis- 
tinct when having been a victim to the bad conduct 
of Paul, who returns blow for blow, or having re- 
ceived consideration from Martha, whom he has 
never struck nor offended, the child will begin to 
grasp another relation : that which makes the con- 
duct of others towards him depend in part on his 
conduct towards them. The child does not need a 
great effort of intelligence to appreciate, in his own 
way, the maxims of the gospel, Do unto others. Do 
not do unto others, and so on, having learned to his 
sorrow that he must set the example if he wishes to 
be treated well. 

But at the same time that it is strengthening 
the utilitarian tendencies of our little moral ap- 
prentice, the intercourse that he holds with other 
children opens new paths to his affectionate fac- 
ulties. 

It is not only when he feels on his own account 
the effects of Paul's brutality, or of Martha's jeal- 
ous humour, that he protests and takes offence ; it 
is also when he sees his brother or his comrade ex- 
posed to the same vexations. He puts himself in 
the place of the one who is molested or plundered ; 
he suffers with him. Sympathy moves him for the 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL SENSE 1^7 

suffering of others, egoism had moved liim till now 
for his own. " We all have two feelings/' said 
Helvetius, " which are the foundations of society : 
pity and justice. When a child sees his fellow tor- 
tured, he feels sudden anguish ; he shows it by cries 
and by tears; if he can, he will help those who 
suffer." * 

Thus the child's sensibility extends and becomes 
enlarged ; the source of pleasure and of pain, at first 
bound up in the narrow circle of egoistic impres- 
sions, receives new tributaries. The ideas and the 
feelings of conscience grow accordingly, and, ad- 
vancing from generalization to generalization, the 
child approaches the highest point of moral evolu- 
tion. He is no longer to be disturbed merely by his 
own comfort ; by a generous emotion, he shares the 
fortunes of others, in the measure of the affection 
that he feels for them. Moreover, the habit of 
these emotions will engender an impulse little by 
little, a tendency to avoid every wrong action, not 
only because he would have to suffer for it, but 
because it would cause prejudice or pain to some 
one else. 

We have come, then, to a complex state, in 
which are mingled several of the essential elements 
of the moral sense; and if we wished to sum up 
the different steps of the way travelled, provided 
we could lend the child a precise language, of 
which he is as yet incapable, we should say that 
the child has said to himself : " If I do what is for- 
bidden me — for instance, if I strike my little brother 

* Helvetius, De I'Esprit, Introduction, vi. 



178 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

— papa will scold and punisli me; it will grieve 
mamma ; m.y little brother will return the blow ; I 
am bad, for I do wrong to my little brother." 

Of course we suppose that no external cause of 
premature demoralization has changed the normal 
unfolding of the childish faculties. In many cases, 
bad inclinations, the instinct of revolt, natural 
hardness of heart, anger, pride, may stop or retard 
the evolution that we have described, but they will 
not prevent the inner force that acts in the child 
from developing, sooner or later.* 



The most important point remains: We have 
been engaged thus far only in a preparatory work ; 
as yet, nothing has appeared that would reveal in 
the child the idea of a moral law, existing by itself, 
the feeling of an inner obligation, the notion of duty 

* It is a difficult question to determine whether shame exists in 
very little children. " The child," they say (Les Enfants criminels, 
by Tomel and Rollet, 1892, p. 233), " in his first childhood is not 
chaste, because he has no idea of shame. It is only little by little 
that this feeling comes." Without going into the question too deep- 
ly, it seems certain to us that, in his innocent ingenuousness, the lit- 
tle child knows neither shame nor shamelessness. Doubtless there 
are found, as the result of perversions of nature, children who, 
very early, show an unhealthy precocity, but in general the little 
child is pure ; and when he has grown a little larger, shame ap- 
pears of itself, as by a sort of secret instinct, which has been found 
to exist even in idiotic children. It seems to us that it is profan- 
ing the natural innocence of these little beings to talk, as Perez 
boldly does, of the sexual instinct in the child of two or three years, 
or to cite, as Dupanloup allows himself to do, physicians who have 
seen " amorous nurslings in the cradle." 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL SENSE 179 

— properly speaking, in a word, the real conscience. 
"We see, indeed, that Tiedemann's son, always pre- 
cocious, exclaimed at two and a half, when he 
believed that he had done something good, " People 
will say, ' It is a good boy ! ' '' and that he ceased to 
do foolish things when told that a neighbour was 
looking at him. But however important this re- 
gard for others' opinions may be, in which, moreover, 
we must see only a new extension of the original 
desire to be approved and praised by his own par- 
ents, timid submission to the judgment of others 
does not represent in any way the equivalent of the 
inner judgment, by which the ripe man decides that 
an action is good in itself, and feels obliged to per- 
form it. How does this decisive crisis of the moral 
evolution come about, if indeed it does come about ? 
How is the pure and abstract idea of good, the idea 
that arouses an inner judge in each individual, sub- 
stituted for the fleeting interests, for the movements 
of sympathy that we have analyzed ? We do not 
hesitate to answer that it is education, education 
alone, that can, in aiding Nature, produce this defi- 
nite transformation.* 

If we gave it time, by the energy of its own re- 
flections, in the experience of life and at the school 
of sorrow, the conscience would finally be formed 
without special teaching ; in time it could produce 
all of its effects without any help from without. 

* Such is also very nearly the opinion of Marion : " As to the 
moral sense, I have found nothing resembling it in the nursing 
child. It will appear much later, in great part as the result of 
education." (Marion, Les Mouvements de I'enfant, Revue scienti- 
fique, vol. Ixv, p. 770.) 



180 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

Indeed, this unaided formation must be possible, 
since humanity has come out of a savage state, and 
morality has been founded. But if you abandon 
the child to his own strength, you cannot reason- 
ably demand such an effort of abstraction. A con- 
temporary educator has gone so far as to write: 
"There is nothing at the bottom of the child's 
moral sense ; the morality of children is not dif- 
ferent from that of grown people, inculcated by the 
latter, practised by the former, according to their 
strength, by interest, by sympathy, by obedience, 
by self-love ; never, we believe, by the rigid feeling 
of duty alone, of which we believe them to be abso- 
lutely incapable.'^ * Incapable by themselves, per- 
haps, but not when education aids. Education can 
hasten the march of ideas, can at least initiate the 
child into the truths of conscience, and spare him in 
part the painful slowness of an exclusively personal 
elaboration of the moral sense. Doubtless no one 
will ever bring complete clearness into the child's 
conscience ; but the lessons of the family or of the 
school may sow very early in his soul, as in a soil 
well prepared by nature, the seeds that subsequent 
education will develop. And if it is true, as Quinet 
thought, that there is nothing of value or worth 
in the man that was not prepared for in the child, 
it is greatly to be hoped that it may be so here, and 
that we do not deceive ourselves ; that ideal moral- 
ity may be mildly suggested, insinuated, that it may 
be in fine, not the late fruit of experience, but as an 
emanation of conscience already formed and organ- 

* Al. Martin, I'Education du caractere, Paris, 1887, p. 70. 



DEVELOPMENT OP THE MORAL SENSE Igl 

ized, which is transmitted, so to speak, to the nas- 
cent conscience. 

Recall the advice of educators on this point. 
Mine, de Remnsat wishes that in governing the 
child the word of obligation, ought, might be sub- 
stituted as soon as possible for the word of neces- 
sity, must.* Such is the opinion also of Mme. Guizot, 
who declares that she has seen the power of moral 
ideas in children from six to seven years old.f She 
says: "Do I not see children, already sensible to 
the good, finding in it the motive and the reward 
of their efforts ? Sophie's zeal would make her 
enthusiastic for a lesson in which she could find no 
other pleasure than that of doing right ; and Louise 
too could repress the desire to strike her little play- 
mate, who broke down her card-house, content with 
being able to say to me, ' Have I not done well, 
mamma ? ' " Michelet, positive as he always is, goes 
still farther. " Is yon ought a complicated idea that 
asks for explanations ? By no means. In the world 
of work, without education, and without reasoning, 
by a simple intuition, one very early learns the 
notion of duty." J Michelet forgets that in this 
"world of work'^ of which he speaks he admits 
by hypothesis the existence of regular habits, of 
virtuous examples, which are themselves an edu- 
cation, the best of all. 

Assuredly lessons may have their influence, pro- 
vided they are simple, appropriate to the child's 

* Mme. de Reraiisat, Essai sur reducation des femmes, p. 111. 
f Mme. Guizot, Lettres de famille, etc., vol. i, p. 103. 
% Michelet, Nos fils, p. 137. 



182 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

small experience. But we mnst guard against mer- 
iting the reproach, that a witty writer addressed 
very lately to the teaching in primary schools : 
^^The official programs of morality are superb/' 
he said, ^' but they are like trying to prevent little 
Gustave from stealing apples from a neighbouring 
orchard, by reading him the Vicar of Savoy's Pro- 
fession of Faith." We shall not read the profession 
of faith to him, but in language not less solemn, we 
shall call his attention to what there is in common 
in the different duties that we accustom him to per- 
form. We shall emphasize the pleasure or the dis- 
comfort that he already feels in doing right or 
wrong. We shall honour his good actions and 
shame his faults. While counting a little on ex- 
hortation and talking to him, we shall depend 
above all on action, on exercise, and on example. 
It is from the individual practice of virtues that 
the idea of the good is born, and from the exercise 
of liberty that the idea of responsibility springs. 
It is also in seeing all those who surround him sub- 
mitting to the same rule, that the child experiences 
and grasps the fact, living and active, the universal 
moral law. What Marcus Aurelius said of the 
different virtues — " My grandfather taught me pa- 
tience, to my mother I owe piety, to my father 
modesty " — is no less true of conscience itself, which 
is the principle of the particular virtues. It is by 
contact with the conscience of their father, of their 
mother, of their teacher, that the conscience of chil- 
dren is always developed, when they are so fortu- 
nate as to have but to continue in their personal 
education the work of their first years. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL SENSE 183 

If a counter proof were desired — that is to say, 
facts to show that to the absence of education cor- 
responds a radical weakness of the moral sense — 
it would be enough to open the books that treat 
of criminality in children. We do not confound 
the moral sense and practical morality; but it is 
permissible to judge of the tree by its fruits, to 
appreciate the state of a moral consciousness from 
the outward acts that manifest it. Indeed, of 9,906 
children who in 1875 were confined in penitentiaries 
or in reform schools, 4,543 were orphans or half- 
orphans ; 154 were inmates of alms-houses — that is 
to say, they had been deprived of all family train- 
ing ; 1,518 were illegitimate children, brought up 
amid dissolute surroundings; 1,615 were born of 
parents that had served sentences, and consequently 
they had received lessons in immorality.* How 
shall we answer a precocious criminal who declares 
before the jury : " I have never met any one who 
was interested in me ; as a child I was given over 
to any chance that might arise ; I am a wreck " ? 

It would be easy to multiply examples of this 
sovereign influence of early education on the moral- 
ity or the immorality of children. Bat this power 
of outward excitations does not at all exclude the 
action of nature; it would even be incomprehen- 
sible without it. The child would not be disposed, 
as he is from the first days of his life, to bend be- 
fore parental authority, if he did not already sus- 
pect, by a sort of secret instinct, the general law of 
duty in the will of his parents, if he did not half 



* Othenin d'Haussonville. I'Enfance k Paris, 1879. 



184 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

comprehend the fact that his mother's and his 
father's orders were doubled, so to speak, by a 
moral authority. The error of those who dispute 
the relative innateness or heredity of the moral con- 
sciousness, results from the fact that they consider 
as innate, as the distinctive work of nature, only 
what appears from the very first hours of life. 
Would they say that it is not natural for the plant 
to bloom because the flowers do not show them- 
selves on the stem until a certain moment of its 
evolution ? Would they say that certain forms of 
insanity — the suicide mania, for instance — are not 
hereditary because the morbid germ, after long years 
of latent life, larva-like, as physicians say, does not 
burst forth in the descendants until they are at an 
advanced age, at forty or fifty years ? In spite of 
the fact that certain circumstances are necessary to 
make it burst forth, the moral consciousness is none 
the less a distinctive characteristic of man. To 
what extent, moreover, nature and education work 
together in organizing it, it is perhaps impossible 
to say with precision ; for in this perpetual exchange 
that is going on between what is within and what 
is without, we can never know exactly what the 
child contributes himself and what he receives from 
others. 

What is certain, at least, is that at no age can 
he or ought he to remain a stranger to moral cul- 
ture. Let us not suppose that speech can serve as 
our only instrument of education ; actions speak 
louder than words, and can precede them. Of 
course there will be some scoffers to find it strange 
that, in respect to this little pink-and- white being, 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE MORAL SENSE 185 

who stumbles as he takes his first steps in life, 
who cannot yet walk alone, the philosopher dares 
to raise the high question of the government of 
self, of conscience, and of naorality. All, however, 
who know how slow the evolution of the faculties 
is, to what long and indiscernible roots, stretching 
out into the child's past, are attached the flowers 
"'and the fruits of maturity, will be interested as we 
are in these first obscure flutterings of the moral 
life. It is never too early to put the future man at 
the school of duty. 

Paradise lost, that is for each of us the ensem- 
ble of impressions of first childhood, the new and 
naive joys of the first years. It is there, indeed, 
that our destiny is being decided ; it is there that 
the focus of good influences, or of bad inspirations, 
is being formed, to accompany us through our 
whole lives. 

This is why it is not an anachronism to think 
from the cradle of the res23onsibility, the moral 
obligations, that will one day rest on the head 
of the little child, smiling now in his unconscious 
innocence, his ideas and his feelings only the re- 
flections of those of his parents ; just as his left 
cheek or his right cheek, when he has finished 
nursing, like one side of a peach gilded by the sun, 
remains very red for several minutes, warmed as it 
is by the touch of the mother's breast. 



CHAPTER VI 

WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER 

I. The child's original innocence. — Optimists and pessimists. — 
Contrary exaggerations. — The little child evidently puts no 
moral intention into his actions. — He has no idea either of 
Qvil or of good. II. The child's faults. — Different opinions. — 
Ignorance, lack of foresight, explain the so-called instinctive 
cruelty. — The child is a Cartesian, without knowing it. — Lying. 
— Lying is not an hereditary vice. — Analysis of the causes of 
falsehood. — Apparent falsehoods. — Falsehood is born of fear. 
— Predisposition to deception. — Power of simulation observed 
in older children. III. Is there an instinct of theft? — The 
child's love of dainties. — The part played by example in glut- 
tony. — Other faults. — The lack of reflection is most often 
the cause. IV. There are innate dispositions that are really 
bad. — Jealousy, anger, consequently the need of doing harm. 
— Anti-social instincts. — Are there born criminals'? V. The 
child's good points. — The instinct of liberality counterbalances 
the avaricious instinct. — Sympathy and tenderness. — Particu- 
lar attachments. — Social sensibility. — Sense of justice. — Re- 
morse and repentance. 



!N"ovELiSTS, poets, and even philosophers like to 
imagine the child as being in a state of perfect 
purity, of original innocence. " Childhood/^ wrote 
Edmond About, " is a spring direct from the moun- 
tain ; it is moved without being troubled, because 
it is pure to the very bottom. . . . The innocence 
186 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER 187 

of cMldren is like the unsullied snow of the Jung- 
frau, which nothing has touched, not even a bird's 
foot." Bernardin de Saint Pierre said in the same 
way : " It is children who remove the corruption of 
society, by bringing to it new and innocent souls. 
'New generations resemble the dews and the rain of 
heaven, which refresh the waters of the river, slug- 
gish in its course and ready to be corrupted." 
Who would not like, if reason authorized it, to 
linger over this sweet dream ? A new humanity 
for each generation, it would mean, beginning 
anew the course of its destinies, incessantly reju- 
venated and renewed by these pure souls of chil- 
dren coming into the world, without a past, white 
pages on which education could freely write all 
that she would. It is true that the hypothesis has 
its reverse side; in not inheriting the faults that 
our parents transmit to us with life, we should not, 
on the other hand, profit by all that the work of 
generations bequeaths to us in the form of germs 
of happy talents. 

But of what good is it to insist on the imaginary 
consequences of a radically false conception, what- 
ever the majority of mothers may think while 
cradling their child and enjoying the same illu- 
sion ? The first error is in believing that the child 
is an absolute beginning, a tabula rasa, as Comenius 
and Diesterweg suppose, to cite only these.* It is 

* Imbued with the ideas of Bacon, Comenius accepted the Nihil 
est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu, which amounts to 
saying that the acquisitions of experience are everything. As to 
Diesterweg, although he has usually little taste for philosophical 
generalizations, and, although he contradicted himself later, he said 



188 LATER INFANCY OF TEE CHILD 

abundantly proved to-day tliat from nature or he- 
redity each creature brings with him at birth his 
own dispositions, his own aptitudes. His history is 
partly written in advance, not in the mysterious 
book of destiny, but in the annals of his ancestors. 
The child does not start from nothing and arrive at 
everything. He is like a medal, new doubtless, but 
formed in an old mould ; and the more that we ob- 
serve him, the more we discover and decipher char- 
acters at first illegible and obscure, but deeply in- 
scribed and engraved. 

When the chimera of an indeterminate primitive 
state, deprived of all pre-established form, has been 
cast aside; when educators and parents see that 
they no longer work a void, but that they will have 
to reckon with all sorts of instinctive inclinations, 
it then remains to prove to them that these inclina- 
tions are not all good, that they are not solely the 
gifts of a benevolent fairy. Sometimes they are 
only too much like the inspirations of a malicious 
spirit ; in a word, the child does wrong as naturally 
as he does right. If we put aside the illusions of 
paternal and maternal love in studying facts, they 
contradict only too easily what in England is called 
the dogma of Lord Palmerston, and what we might 
call in France the dogma of J. J. Rousseau. In 
every one of us there is a fund of vicious disposi- 
tions, exaggerated in some by the bad antecedents 
of the race, but in all more or less apparent, which 

in 1835, following his compatriot Beneke, that "there is nothing 
innate in the soul, apart from a certain degree of excitability, and 
a certain degree of energy and of vivacity, on which depend the 
perfection and the rapidity of the sensation." 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER 1S9 

oppose to the most vigilant education their in- 
destructible germ of evil. So, to the " adulation of 
childhood/^ to those who say with Rousseau, " The 
first movements of Nature are always correct/' or 
with Mme. Guizot, "No inclination is bad in it- 
self," we might answer by an appeal to contrary 
protestations — no less false, to be sure, in their ab- 
solute exaggeration — which are made at all times. 
"We are born children of wrath," says St. Paul; 
" All are born for damnation," says St. Augustine. 

Truth lies between these two extreme opinions. 
Optimists and pessimists are equally wrong. It is 
in vain that Mme. Guizot splits hairs, and ends her 
long and laborious discussion with this astonishing 
conclusion: "We are bad simply in the sense that 
we are not good." It is sophistical to pretend that 
the bad has no reality, for the subtle reason that 
the bad is simply the absence of good. Try, then, 
to console a blind man or a cripple by showing him 
learnedly that he is not unfortunate since his mis- 
fortune consists merely in the privation of an eye 
or of an arm. But it is certain, as facts will soon 
show, that several of the child's instincts are posi- 
tively vicious, and that they contain an effective 
germ of evil. Even when we allow to Mme. Guizot 
that the evil is not born of the inclination, that it 
results from the perversion of the inclination, it 
remains nevertheless true that this general tendency 
to perversion, which, in the child as in the man, 
alters and corrupts even the naturally good inclina- 
tions, is by itself a bad instinct. 

This said, we must add immediately that in the 
manifestation of his instincts, whatever they may 
15 



190 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

be, in the acts that he performs, the child puts no 
moral intention. It may be questioned whether the 
" pure taste for evil " exists even in the adult. With 
how much more reason should we question it in the 
child ! Man is not naturally a moral being ; he be- 
comes one only little by little. Just as the child's 
good actions never evince a real morality, so his 
faults, his obstinacy, his foolishness, never result 
from an intentional perversity. In the evil, as in 
the good, he is unconscious. We ought not to lis- 
ten to Mme. ISTecker de Saussure, when she pre- 
tends to find in a very little girl the bad will to do 
wrong for the sake of doing wrong, any more than 
we should accept Darwin's testimony when he be- 
lieves that he sees a beginning of repentance and of 
moral shame in his little sugar thief. 

The little girl of whom Mme. Necker speaks,* 
would have disobeyed for the sake of disobeying, 
" We saw in her, at the age of eighteen months, the 
struggle between observing the rule and defying 
it. When alone with her mother, who was sick in 
bed, she came one day, without the slightest mo- 
tive, to open revolt. Dresses, hats, hand-screens, lit- 
tle nicknacks of all sorts, were put on the floor in the 
middle of the room. She sang and danced around 
the pile with joy unspeakable ; her mother's anger 
had no effect in stopping her. She had certainly 
the idea of evil ; her heightened colour showed the 
reproaches of her conscience, but the pleasure con- 
sisted in stifling the voice of that conscience." 

In this little family scene we believe that there 

* Book III, chap. vi. 



' WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER 191 

is only a frenzy of movement, one of the crises to 
which the child's natural need of activity leads 
when it is superexcited ; there is not depravity of 
will, a malicious joy in braving the rule and shak- 
ing off the yoke. At most we might see in it the 
explosion of the instinct of independence, the satis- 
faction of showing one's strength, of exercising 
one's liberty. It is not remorse, but pleasure that 
heightens the child's colour and gives full play to 
his petulance, in a real fit of passing mania. He 
does wrong without the will to do wrong entering 
at all into his conduct. Little Macha, the heroine 
of one of Tolstoi's tales, who at the age of three sets 
the haystacks on fire and stamps with joy before the 
blaze that she has kindled, evidently has no thought 
of the disastrous consequences of her action.* 

II 

Let us now go into detail and examine in turn 
the faults and the good qualities of the child ; the 
faults first. 

People are not contented to denounce the bad 
instincts of childhood in general terms ; they have 
set up against it formal specifications. Dupanloup 
has even attempted a classification of its faults. f 

It is well, nevertheless, to call attention to the 
fact that the charges directed against the child are 

* Leon Tolstoi, Pour les enfants, Paris, 1888, p. 111. Note, 
moreover, that the incendiary mania, quite frequent in children, 
is most often the result of cerebral disorders and of epileptic dis- 
eases. 

f Dupanloup, 1 'Enfant, 1874, chap. ix. 



192 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

far from being as numerous as tlie panegyrics com- 
posed in Ms honour. Is this a proof that in the 
childish nature the good far outweighs the bad ? 
Have the graces of the early years merited the indul- 
gence of their judges ? It is generally understood 
that in the case of every parent the heart blinds the 
reason, so that people's own children are the most 
amiable in the world. And although we are more 
disposed to see the faults of other people's children, 
even here some tender and complacent sympathy 
softens the severity of our judgment. 

ISTote also Emile Deschaners experience in the 
ingenious anthology that he composed thirty years 
ago under the title The Good and the Bad that has 
been said of Children. The first part — the good — is 
very full ; the second is so empty that the author 
cannot succeed in hiding the fact. Struck by the 
antithesis, and also by the remembrance of another 
of his writings. The Good and the Bad that has 
been said of Women, in which the chapter on the 
bad had furnished a rich morsel of scandal, Des- 
chanel wished to draw from the enemies of child- 
hood. But apart from the sallies of some surly 
minds, or of some " useless bachelors," such as Boi- 
leau and Chamfort, Deschanel has found nothing 
with which to fill up his outline ; so that, in order 
to increase his little volume, he is reduced to repro- 
ductions of the legends of the Enfants terribles of 
Gavarni, stories that show less the wickedness of 
children than their acuteness and their wit. 

It is a bachelor. La Bruy^re, and a bishop, Du- 
panloup, who have most learnedly established the 
catalogue of the child's faults. In a single sen- 



WEAK AND STRONa POINTS OF CHARACTER I93 

tence, whicli — moreover, aims at the whole of hu- 
manity over the heads of children — the author of 
Caracteres traces a not very flattering picture. 
"Children," he says, "are haughty, disdainful, 
angry, envious, curious, selfish, idle, fickle, timid, 
intemperate, deceitful, insincere, . . . they do not 
want to suffer wrong and they love to do it ; they 
are already men." * Dupanloup distinguishes three 
sorts of faults — corporal faults, intellectual faults, 
and, finally, moral faults, the only ones with which 
we are occupied now. In this numerous family of 
the origins of sin, the author of TEnfant establishes 
a whole genealogy : first the natural faults, harsh- 
ness, rudeness, capriciousness, mobility, dissipation, 
talkativeness, indiscretion; a second category in- 
cludes the faults called by the queer name " super- 
natural '' uiidev the pretext that they are "above 
all opposed to the virtues of grace and represent in 
man a more marked effect of the loss of original 
justice." These have for cause the triple concupis- 
cence, pride, sensuality, and, finally, cupidity or 
curiosity, which is the cupidity to know. Pride 
itself is the source of four principal faults — the 
spirit of indocility, the spirit of independence, the 
spirit of contradiction, the spirit of justification. 

We have cited this only because we wish to 
omit nothing, but it is more a theological than a 
philosophical sketch, a somewhat fantastic enu- 
meration, in which things are seen from too high a 
point of view, across the troublesome question of 
original sin, in which curiosity and the instinct of 

* La Bruyere, Caracteres, chapter on Man. 



194 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

independence are presented as faults, and from 
which, on the other hand, are omitted the most 
authentic infirmities of the child's soul, jealousy 
and anger. 

While acknowledging that Nature has sown tares 
by the side of good wheat, we could not admit that 
the foundations of all the child's inclinations are 
spoiled. How much more fair and more exact is 
the philosophy of an humaner inspiration, which, 
on the contrary, proves that for the most part the 
child's faults result, not from original perversion, 
but from the bad influences of a badly conducted 
education! It is this education which, as Froebel* 
says, has turned the faculties, the forces, and the 
aspirations of the child from their natural path 
and has prevented their full development. How 
much better, also, the method of impartial observa- 
tion, which we shall follow, and which explains 
many actions, apparently bad, not by a vicious pre- 
cocity, but by an intellectual insufficiency, by igno- 
rance, by the lack of foresight and reflection in the 
child, who cannot yet calculate the real trend of all 
that he does ! It is in this way, for instance, that 
we can explain the instincts of cruelty attributed 
to the child. 

"This age is without pity," said La Fontaine, 
who assuredly did not love children as he loved 
animals. To judge from appearances. La Fontaine 
was right. But the asserted cruelty of the child 
who tortures animals is only ignorance.f The child 

* Froebel, Education of Man, p. 100. 

f We must acknowledge that in certain natures very early per- 
verted, conscious cruelty appears. The story is told of a little 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER 195 

is a Cartesian without knowing it; lie makes no 
difference between his pnnchinello and his dog. 
If the doctrine of the automatism of beasts had 
not had the good fortune to occur to a great phi- 
losopher, it would have found at least perpetual 
adherents in all these little executioners of two or 
three years, who torture their favourite animals 
only because they do not know that they are hurt- 
ing them. 

From the day when he suspects that in pulling 
feathers out of a bird or in pulling the cat^s tail he 
is causing suffering akin to what he feels himself 
when he is maltreated, the child usually discon- 
tinues his cruel play. If he persists, in spite of 
the suffering animal's cries, it is because his curi- 
osity is the stronger.* 

Andr^ Theuriet tells in the memoirs of his youth 
that at the age of four years he took a fancy to 
seize four new-born puppies and carry them to the 
fountain, " just to see." " When I saw them," he 
says, " miserably swimming and struggling in the 
water, I had a consciousness of my infamy; my 
sensibility was aroused, and I wanted to rescue the 

girl who co-operated with her parents in torturing her little 
brother. She placed a pin between her teeth, then asked the 
child to come and embrace her ; the latter trustfully approached 
and the pin stuck into his flesh. But here, as in similar cases, it 
is a question of children relatively grown, whom example and 
education have perverted. 

* Mme. Necker de Saussure seems to us to force the pessimistic 
note when she claims that for the child torturing an animal the 
cream of the pleasure consists in defying the emotion that he 
feels in hardening himself against pity, and having the strength 
to be cruel. (Education progressive, Book III, chap, vi.) 



196 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

poor things. When I failed in doing this, I fled, 
full of terror, thinking in my soul of four years 
that hell, of which my mother had often spoken 
to me, would certainly punish such misdeeds/' 

The child's conduct, then, when he maltreats 
animals, comes from the same needs that make him 
tear open his cardboard horses or demolish his 
drums : from an eagerness to know, and also from 
an imperious tendency to act, which works heed- 
lessly. Froebel tells us of a child who was not 
careful enough of the pigeons that he was raising ; 
he even aimed at one, one day, and hit it with a 
stone, killing it. Curiosity, need of action, and igno- 
rance — these suffice to explain and to justify most 
of the wrong deeds charged to the child's cruelty. 

It is more difficult to analyze the many causes 
that make falsehood so common in children that 
Montaigne could say, " Falsehood grows as fast as 
they do."' At the risk of seeming optimistic, we 
shall not hesitate to say that falsehood is not, as 
certain observers of childhood claim, an hereditary 
vice, nor a nearly universal vice. If the child has 
not been subjected to bad influences, if example has 
not perverted him, if a discipline of repression and 
constraint has not driven him to seek a refuge in 
dissimulation, he is usually frankness and sincerity 
itself. All that he has on his heart he says ; he 
says too much for the taste of some parents. We 
all know the indiscretions of " enfants terribles " ; 
they are all " enfants terribles," more or less. They 
tell everything, what they have done, what others 
have done. The bad fault of tale-bearing most 
often results merely from the need of telling every- 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER I97 

thing. "My little rogue," says Guyan, "always 
comes to tell me, sometimes to boast, sometimes 
with a contrite air, all the foolish things of his 
day." I myself have observed a child of seven 
years who had never lied, and who came to confess 
his fault before I had discovered it, saying to me in 
a trembling, sheepish air, " I think, papa, that you 
are going to punish me ; I have done this or that." 
It is true that the child is not contented with 
telling what he has seen, what he has heard ; he 
also invents, but this invention is only a play, an 
innocent travesty of the truth. In the first awak- 
ening of his imagination he delights in fiction, and 
he plays with words as he plays with sand, with 
pieces of wood ; he makes sentences without 
thought for reality, in the same way that he con- 
structs houses, imaginary chateaux. Guyau re- 
ports this trait of his child : " Just now he said to 
himself in an ordinary tone, ' Papa talks badly, he 
said sevette ; baby speaks nicely, he says serviette ' " 
{napkin, the second being the correct form). [N'at- 
urally, this was the opposite of the truth. A little 
girl of two and a half years uttered, with the into- 
nations of a real sentence, a long series of sounds 
utterly without sense ; she concluded drolly by say- 
ing, " That is what you do not understand, papa ! " 
She did not understand it herself ; she did not at- 
tach any signification to the words that she strung 
together by chance ; she was playing. It was almost 
the same motive, with the added desire of making 
a sensation, that inspired in Darwin, when a child, 
the habitual falsehoods of which he accuses himself 
in his Memoirs. " I once gathered much valuable 



198 LATEE, INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

fruit from my father's trees and hid it in tlie 
slinibbery and then ran in breathless haste to 
spread the news that I had discovered a hoard of 
stolen fruit." * 

Real falsehood, moral falsehood, which presup- 
poses the intention of deceiving, is born only of 
fear. If treated with kindness, the child remains 
trusting and sincere ; if terrified by our severity, 
he dissembles and he lies. " Who has broken this 
piece of furniture ? " we cry out in anger. The lit- 
tle culprit, frightened, answers, " It was not I." It 
would be better, says Miss Edgeworth, to be re- 
signed to having things broken, than to put the 
child's sincerity to test. As, unfortunately, this 
advice is often neglected, as too many parents 
scold unceasingly, right or wrong, the child covers 
his weakness with falsehood as with a buckler. 

Give imitation its due also. Prompt to grasp 
all that goes on around him, the child does not de- 
lay in perceiving that truth is not always respected 
in the conversation of his parents, nor in that of the 
servants. If it were only the commonplace false- 
hood heard each day when near the door, " Madam 
has gone out," it would be enough to make him 
unlearn his natural sincerity. 

There is then no hereditary tendency to false- 
hood, whatever may be the opinion of Perez,t who 
claims that we can notice " from the cradle, at least 
in some children, the signs of an innate disposition 
to concealment, to dissimulation, to ruse." Apart 

* Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, p. 27. 

f Perez, FEducation des le berceau, 3d edition, p. 279. 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER I99 

from the fact that it has never been granted to ns 
to meet these little hypocrites in long clothes, who 
would lie in some way even before they could speak, 
we think that if they do exist at all, the general 
tendency to deceive, to dissemble, would be in them 
only an acquired disposition. Nature and heredity 
make some children more idle, more rebellious ; cir- 
cumstances place by their side stupid or violent par- 
ents ; and in that case, being more inclined by their 
temperament to commit faults, which on the other 
hand bring a more severe repression, children are 
more often led to lie, more disposed to make false- 
hood a habit. 

Let us not deny, nevertheless, that in the child, 
as in woman, a natural keenness, joined to weakness, 
is a predisposition to little ruses, to little artifices. 
Witness, for instance, the child who, having said 
to her mother in a moment of ill-humour, " Bad ! " 
went on after a moment of silence and corrected 
herself timidly, *' Dolly bad." The same little girl, 
observed by L. Ferri, pretended to feel a need that 
she did not feel, in order that she might be allowed 
to get down from the table and run to her play. 

The child is not born a liar; he becomes one, 
but with awkwardness ; most often he is prompt to 
take back his first falsehood, only to invent another, 
ending, after many contradictions, by avowing the 
truth. As Ratisbonne said : 

" . . . . L'enf ant vaut mieux que I'homme : 
II sait deja mentir, mais non dissimuler ! " * 

* Compare Herbart (according to Dereux's Psycho] ogie appli- 
quee a I'education): "Look at children, especially in the first 



200 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

But, you say, how reconcile all this with the 
heart-breaking instances that forensic medicine 
furnishes us, when it shows us children before jus- 
tice, accused or testifying, imagining with an ex- 
traordinary facility and holding with a heart- 
rending obstinacy all sorts of false stories, with de- 
tails as false as they are exact, whether to excuse 
themselves or to charge some one else ? We must 
acknowledge that sometimes there is found in chil- 
dren an incredible power of simulation, but only 
in children of ten or fifteen years, who have been 
spoiled by unhealthful surroundings, who have 
learned at the sad school of misery that knavery 
and deceit are weapons in the struggle for ex- 
istence, and that they can be useful only if they 
know how to manage these with assurance and 
with bluster. Therefore their tenacity in false- 
hood, which is often only a lesson that has been 
taught them. Sometimes they end by believing 
themselves the fables that they report. In other 
cases, the vainglory of playing a role upholds 
them in their imperturbable assurance. But these 
are the vices of " Gavroches,'" of perverted little 
" gamins " ; at the most, vices of the family which 
are developed only in appropriate mediums, in fel- 
lowship with other vices, and which Nature usually 
spares children that are WQll-born, and in any case 
very little children. 

years, when the domination of a set form of egoism has not yet 
been established. This is the age when they cannot deceive; 
their words and their actions are the immediate expression of 
their imagination." 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER 201 

III 

Let us return to the faults of early childliood. 
People insinuate very freely that it has the instinct 
of theft. Doubtless particular, exceptional inherit- 
ances in the civilized world — habits of race in a 
savage people — elsewhere a special education like 
that at Sparta or in the Court of Miracles, may pro- 
duce precocious thieves. But it would be a cal- 
umny on childhood to generalize on this subject. 
All that we can say, to be just, is that the child 
has not, instinctively, the idea of property at all. 
Should we be surprised at this ? It is so difficult 
to define property that we can pardon the child, at 
three or four years, for not having a very clear 
notion of it. He has not yet studied the code. He 
does not always meet the gardener Robert, who ex- 
plains to him, as Rousseau had done to Emile, the 
origins of property. At two years, Tiedemann's son 
did not allow his sister to sit on his chair or to take 
any of his clothes; he called all that his affairs^ 
But, on the other hand, he had no scruples against 
taking his sister's affairs. Legouvd sums up the 
question very aptly when he says : " The child has 
not the instinct of theft, but he lacks all instinct of 
the property of others." 

It is ignorance, too, imprudence of children and 
of parents, that engenders one of the passions of 
childhood, the liking for dainties. We shall not 
excuse it by saying that it is a sign of health ; we 
shall not agree with Herbert Spencer in believing 
that the child's appetites are infallible, that he 
gorges himself with sugar only because sugar is a 



202 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

food that he needs, that if he were left to himself 
he would never give himself indigestion, that his 
intemperance is only a reaction against unjust pri- 
vations. ISTo, we must recognise the fact that the 
child has inordinate appetites as well as inexplica- 
ble dislikes. If he is not stopped, he will go far 
beyond the limits of hunger and of thirst for a fa- 
vourite dish, for a preferred drink. And whatever 
is done to him, he will refuse with a repugnance 
that it is impossible to conquer, dishes that he will 
be very fond of a little later. The first lively scene 
that I recall having had with one of my sons came 
about in the early vegetable season over a dish of 
peas which he did not wish to eat. Supplications, 
threats, the dark closet, nothing had any effect. 
Tired of the struggle, we had to yield to the child's 
unconquerable disgust. It is easier to see the reason 
for immoderate tastes. In the beginning experience 
very soon teaches the child what inconvenience he 
may feel as the result of eating too much cake, too 
much fruit, of unrestrainedly satisfying his glut- 
tony. In itself this liking for dainties has nothing 
vicious in it. "Why should we be disappointed that 
the child seeks eagerly for what brings him a pleas- 
ant sensation ? Moreover, it is often our own in- 
temperance that serves as an example to the child. 
What should the little glutton do, if not desire 
with excess his share of the dainties that load his 
parents' table ? To judge of the true nature of the 
child, before maternal weakness or bad example 
has altered it, we should have to take the nursling. 
Whoever has seen a child nurse, knows well that 
when once satisfied, he stops of his own accord ; he 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER 203 

plays on Ms mother's lap; he smilmgly puts his 
little lips towards the source of abundance still 
open before him; he takes it again, then lets go, 
but he does not press it again after he has been suf- 
ficiently nourished. 

The indiscretion of parents is also the princi- 
pal instigator of childish vanity. " Every species 
of flattery should be carefully avoided ; a boy who 
happens to say a sprightly thing is generally ap- 
plauded so much that often he remains a coxcomb 
all his lif e.^' * You will remember the story of the 
little girl who, having been complimented in the 
morning by her mother for a saying more or less 
witty, said in the evening before a visitor, " Mamma, 
aren't you going to tell the lady what I said this 
morning ?'' 

What is there that they do not reproach the child 
with ? His restless mobility ? But when a man, 
even serious and reflective, comes for the first time 
into a strange land, is he not restless and agitated ? 
Is it so surprising that the child, before this new 
world in which he has some trouble to get his bear- 
ings, where so many different objects appeal to his 
senses, should thoughtlessly direct his nascent at- 
tention first to one side, then to the other ? 

His waywardness ? In the first place, this is 
not so general nor so precocious as people say ; and 
if some rebellious spirits are found from the very 
cradle, are we sure that parents have not had their 
influence, that from the very first hours there may 
not have been actions or words that have called 

* Oliver Goldsmith, Essay on Education. 



204 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

forth, by reaction these movements of insubordina- 
tion ? As far as appears ordinarily, the child^s in- 
stinct of independence is only the necessary first 
manifestation of character and of will. Would any 
one want N"ature to make slavish souls, in which no 
slight desire to resist should give evidence of future 
liberty ? 

His egoism ? Is it not, in its naivete, only the 
pardonable explosion of that self-love of which no 
philosopher would wish to contest the legitimacy, 
since it is one of the essential forces of life ? 

If well led and tempered by sympathetic feel- 
ings, the personal inclinations of the child will be 
virtues later, and will be called in man courage, 
strength of character, love of glory. People find so 
many faults in children only because they try to 
submit them to a common measure with man, be- 
cause in judging them they apply the same rules 
that they use in appreciating the merits of adults ; 
because they forget that the child^s inclinations, 
even the worst of them apparently, are the natural 
conditions of this moment of transition, of this cri- 
sis called childhood ; because, finally, they do not 
think enough of all the particular characteristics 
imposed by the lack of reflection and the inevitable 
thoughtlessness of this first age on a little being, 
who is not, as people have wrongly said, a diminu- 
tive man, but simply a sketch, an outline in a fair 
way to be filled in. 

Note the charming book, Helen's Babies, which 
has made its author, an American, John Habber- 
ton, famous. - It treats of two children and tells all 
the fancies, the absurdities, that could be suggested 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER 205 

by the inventive imagination of two little fiends, 
who for two weeks pester with their unreasonable- 
ness and their caprices a good-natured uncle to 
whose care they have been intrusted, who, in short, 
indulge in all the liberties allowable to two future 
citizens of free America. The moral that follows 
from the amusing story of these two " enfants ter- 
ribles " is, as the translator of the French version, 
William Hughes, states it, " the right of babies to 
be indulged"; in their own mishaps, as in the 
frolics that make their guardian lose his head, they 
give proofs of thoughtlessness, of improvidence, 
much more than of wickedness. 

IV 

When we have given due weight to the part of 
stupid or vicious education, when we have mul- 
tiplied the extenuating circumstances to reduce and 
soften the responsibility to be thrown on the child, 
or at least on his nature, there nevertheless remains 
some bad at the bottom that no indulgence can 
cover, a residue of innate dispositions which do not 
lend themselves to friendly interpretation. ISTot 
only is the child perverted in certain cases by social 
surroundings ; he is naturally perverse, or if the 
word seems too harsh, he is at least in his complex 
nature led towards the wrong as well as towards the 
right.* 

* " The popular idea that children are innocent, while it may 
be true in so far as it refers to evil Jcnotvledge, is totally false in so 
far as it refers to evil impulses, as half an hour's observation in the 
nursery will prove to any one." (Moral Education, Herbert Spencer, 
p. 206.) 

16 



206 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

To tell the truth., it is because he. is already a 
little person very much alive, very ardent in his 
tastes, very sensitive to pleasure, very rebellious 
against all that produces a disagreeable sensation, 
that the child is accessible to the little passions of 
which we are now to speak. Imagine, if possible, a 
being capable of loving, of feeling pleasure and 
pain, never impatient, never irritated by people or 
things that do him harm, that deprive him of what 
he likes or impose on him what displeases him. 
Perhaps reason will one day perform this miracle 
in a reflective man ; but it is not to be expected at 
three years, at five years ! Do not ask them for 
what is impossible ; that the child's soul — in which 
sensibility rules, in which, as the Greek philoso- 
phers say, the iTnOvfxrja-i?, the blind desire, is not 
ruled yet by the vo{)s, by reason — should be exempt 
from these emotions, from these passions, which 
are only the revolt of a desire that is interfered 
with. The only two clearly marked passions that 
exist in the child, anger and jealousy, are of much 
the same nature ; the one breaks out violently in 
cries, in gestures, in words, against all that dis- 
pleases him ; the other, which is a silent anger, be- 
trays itself by sadness or by angry looks. 

Jealousy has been defined as "the bad feeling 
that one experiences when one does not obtain or 
does not possess the advantages obtained or pos- 
sessed by another." In order that these advantages 
should be envied, it is necessary that they should 
be appreciated, and the child's jealousies are con- 
fined to the narrow circle of things of which he 
knows the value. He will not be jealous iDecause 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER 207 

his brother has a better-shaped nose than his own, 
nor because his sister is brighter than he; as yet 
he has no wish to compare himself with others so 
far as his physical or his moral traits are con- 
cerned. But he will be jealous for his toys, for 
clothes, for books, for all that brings him pleas- 
ure. 

Being fed, the child's first pleasure, will be the 
first occasion for his jealousy. St. Augustine no- 
ticed this. " Little child ren,'' he said, " are innocent 
in their body by reason of their weakness ; they 
are not always innocent in their souls. I have 
seen a child sick with jealousy ; he did not speak 
yet, but was very pale and cast bitter glances on 
other children that were being fed with him.'' 

Later, when the child has a taste for caresses 
and for his parents' affection, it will be a sorrow to 
him to have to divide with others. Darwin says : 
'^ On seeing me caressing a doll, my son, when fif- 
teen and a half months old, showed his jealousy 
very clearly." This will be noticeable, above all, 
when the presence of a new brother will cause him 
to have only half as much spoiling as he enjoyed 
alone before. If parents favour one of their chil- 
dren to the detriment of the others, the little ones 
that are slighted will have a deep feeling, not only 
of sadness and of melancholy, which could lead 
them to the point of despair and of suicide, but 
also of envy and of hate towards the preferred 
ones. 

Anger is often only jealousy breaking forth, but 
it can have other causes. It is one of the first and 
one of the most frequent manifestations of the 



208 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

childish, sensibility;* it is produced in connection 
with every disagreeable impression, of whatever 
nature it may be, not only against persons, but 
against inanimate things. A baby two years old 
gets angry at his punchinello and strikes it, just as 
he would strike his brother or his sister. 

Darwin has studied anger in children more thor- 
oughly than any one else. However disposed he 
may be to notice its appearance from the earliest 
age, he warns us that some of the outward signs of 
anger, the contraction of the face, frowning, a gen- 
eral air of discontent, easily recognisable from the 
first weeks, may be only the expression of a simple 
feeling of suffering. " But when my son was nearly 
four years old," he adds, " it became evident from 
the way that the blood mounted to his face and 
made him blush even to the roots of his hair that 
he easily threw himself into a fit of violent anger. 
The slightest cause sufliced; thus, a little after 
seven months, he began one day to utter shrieks 
of rage because a lemon slipped from his fingers 
and he could not grasp it." Anger has this char- 
acteristic : that it not only founds in the depths 
of the soul feelings of ill-will and of enmity; it 
calls forth outward actions; it makes the child, 
as it does the man, and even more than the man, 
employ his hands to strike, his teeth to bite,f and 

* " The date of the appearance of anger," says Dr. Sikorski, 
"cannot be determined precisely, although it is generally sup- 
posed to be developed during the first year of life ; in any case, it 
certainly shows itself in the second year." 

f Darwin indicates as one of the signs of anger the act of 
raising the upper lip and showing the teeth. " A Bengalese child," 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER 209 

use the first weapons that come in his way. 
Young children, when in a violent rage, roll on 
the ground, screaming, kicking, scratching, or 
biting everything within their reach.* This is no 
longer anger alone, it is rage, the rage of the feeble 
and the powerless, the more violent as it is allied 
with less of power. f 

This threatening offensive, which the child, as 
he grows older, tries to render more terrible, un- 
doubtedly results from a secret need of injuring, of 
harming the persons or the things that are the 
objects of his anger — a totally unconscious need at 
first, in which the wicked intention develops only 
little by little. This is Darwin's opinion : " At 
eleven months, when any one gave Doddy a toy 
that he did not want, he repulsed it and struck at 
it; I presume that this latter action was an in- 
stinctive sign, as is the movement of the jaws of the 
young crocodile only just coming from the egg, and 
did not show at all that the child believed himself 
to be harming the toy." But a little earlier, a little 
later, the thought of doing harm appears, and it be- 
comes evident that the expressive and active mim- 
icry of the child in anger is not only the weakened 
reminiscence of acts of violence performed by his 

he says, " who was accused of a misdeed, did not dare to vent his 
anger in words, but he frowned, and by a particular movement 
he showed his eye-tooth on the side towards the accuser." 

* Darwin, Expression of Emotions, p. 241. 

f Even in the case of anger we must give the blame to bad 
education. "Who has not seen an absurd nurse who says to 
the child every day : ' Kick the bad table. Strike the naughty 
chair,' and so on." (Nicolay, op. cit, p. 321.) 



210 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

ancestors ; it is certainly the indication of an ill- 
will that ends in evil-doing. 

It is necessary to notice, moreover^ that concern- 
ing irascible dispositions, as in other things, a dif- 
ference is perceptible between individuals. Chil- 
dren, we believe, are more angry than men ; and 
this for two reasons : because they are weaker, and 
because they are less reasonable. Anger is a prot- 
estation of weakness ; it is also a " short madness/^ 
But between children, according as the tempera- 
ment is more ardent or more timid, there are nota- 
ble inequalities in the propensity to anger. Sex also 
plays a part. It is an interesting observation of 
Darwin^s, but one that needs to be verified, that in 
girls fits of anger do not seem to reach the same 
paroxysms that are found in boys. " At two years 
three months, Doddy had a habit of throwing books, 
sticks, or other objects at the head of any one that 
had displeased him, and I have seen the same thing 
in several others of my sons. On the other hand, I 
have never seen a trace of such a disposition in my 
daughters." And Darwin concludes, not without 
some absurdity : " This makes me suppose that boys 
receive by heredity a tendency to throw objects." 
We would rather believe that the tendency is gen- 
eral, that it is explained simply by the greater 
timidity of little girls. 

The truth of the matter is that it is the signs of 
anger, chiefly, that vary ; although more concen- 
trated in one, more outward in others, it shows 
itself in all. We ought not to be astonished at this, 
since even in grown men it takes on very different 
appearances. Sometimes it makes the face redden. 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER 211 

sometimes makes it pale ; sometimes it calls forth 
m.ovement, som.etimes it paralyzes movement. Per- 
haps a deep psychology might show how to these 
different marks of anger correspond degrees, distinct 
shades of the same feeling, from pouting, which the 
child shows by his frowns and by his lips, to the 
fury that excites and convulses his whole body. 

However this may be, we cannot hide the fact 
that, in spite of his charming candour, the child 
early cherishes some of the bad feelings that Bain 
calls " anti-social instincts/' In his heart there are 
seeds of malignity, of hatred, of evil inclinations, a 
certain need of destructiveness. To disturb, to undo, 
to tear, to destroy, to kill — these are his daily joys ; 
passionate and wicked movements, which can nei- 
ther efface nor make us forget the contrary move- 
ments of kindness and of sympathy, which follow 
them with the inconstancy and the mobility belong- 
ing to childhood. Sometimes it seems as though 
the child took pleasure in plaguing and tormenting 
others. He often wants things, less to possess them 
than to avoid seeing them in the hands of his com- 
rades. It is by studying the child's moral incli- 
nations, chiefly, that one finds how mistaken La 
Bruy^re was when he said : " The character of the 
child seems unique." It is not merely the unequal 
progress of reason that makes the difference in 
characters. The contrast is in nature. N"o child is 
absolutely like other children. A child does not re- 
semble himself, from hour to hour. Fourier recog- 
nised clearly this diversity of characters when he 
divided nurslings into three classes — "the benig- 
nant, the malignant, and little imps." He was, more- 



212 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

over^ so convinced of the reality of bad instincts be- 
longing to the malignant and the impish, that he 
did not think of doubting them ; he simply set his 
wits to work to utilize these two classes of children 
in phalanstery, in employing them for functions 
agreeing with their tastes ; for instance, in destroy- 
ing reptiles. 

If in most cases, even in normal conditions of 
nature, we find a common germ of native wicked- 
ness, we find also, from certain inheritances, dispo- 
sitions more determinedly evil. Caligula saw his 
little daughter killing flies. " She resembles me,^^ 
he said, smiling. It will always be difficult, more- 
over, when it is a question of these particularly bad 
natures — mutinous, imperious, scoffing, angry, and 
cruel natures — to separate what is owing to hered- 
ity and what is the result of education.* 

In some mysterious way, bad parents bequeath 
their own faults to their children; what is much 
more certain still, is that they bring them up badly 
— that is, from the cradle they have given them the 
example of the very vices that they have transmit- 
ted to them, so that precocious immorality may 
pass as well for an imitation as for an hereditary 
influence. The only cases in which the action of 
heredity is really indisputable are those — too nu- 
merous, alas ! — in which it shows a morbid patho- 
logical character, in which a perversity of birth 

* Dr. Sikorski has very justly observed that children, even in 
the beginning of their existence, differ notably as regards their 
sensibility. " While some," he says, " are enduring, patient, good- 
natured, others, on the contrary, are impatient, irritable, whining, 
and so on." 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER 213 

results from vices of organization, from a degen- 
eracy of race which has its source in the physi- 
cal and the moral miseries of parents, and which 
shows itself by the instinct of theft and of mur- 
der, by the incendiary mania, by the madness of 
suicide. People often hold to the supposition that 
there are "born thieves,'' "born assassins,'' that 
certain children present from their birth all the 
characteristics of the criminal type. Without 
wishing to begin a question so delicate, an exam- 
ination of which would detain us too long, we shall 
not hesitate to say that psychologists of the school 
of Lombroso, who consider the criminal as a spe- 
cial human variety, as an hereditary product, seem 
to us to exaggerate the influences and the action 
of heredity. Criminal children become what they 
are under the influence of education, or rather of 
non-education, and are, as they have been called, 
" sociological products." The family, surroundings, 
circumstances — these are the real origins of crime. 
Joseph Lepage, a young assassin, of whom a great 
deal was said a few years ago, said : " If my mother 
had lived, I should not have done as I did." * 

V 

We hasten to turn the page, and to the picture 
of the child's faults, we oppose that of his good 
qualities. If we could not detect in the childish 
consciousness the abstract notion of duty, if we 
found nothing to constitute morality, properly so- 

* See a recent book on this subject, Les enfants en prison, by 
Tomel and Rollet, Paris, Plon, 1892. 



214 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

called, at least we may find there the natural feel- 
ings that precede duties and prepare for virtues. 
Almost always, by the side of bad inclinations, there 
grow good ones, which will correct and stifle the 
first, however little education may aid Nature. " In 
the child's heart," says a disciple of Pestalozzi, 
"good and bad instincts are already awakened 
and are struggling for the direction of his life. 
Those that will find most occasion to be exercised 
will have also the most rapid development, the 
greatest power, and will dominate the child's char- 
acter." * 

It is not rare to see miserly children who grasp 
penny after penny, who guard with a jealous care 
all that they consider as their own especial property. 
On the other hand, the liberality, the generosity of 
some children is a known fact. "Petroea" — one of 
the little girls of whom the pleasing Swedish writer, 
Frederika Bremer, has given us a picture — "Pe- 
troea is good ; giving is her life." Moreover, it costs 
the child a greater effort to divide his cake, to give 
up his toys, than to give alms with the money of 
which he does not as yet know the value. Perhaps 
he will give more willingly to those from whom he 
expects a just return ; to his mother, for instance, 
who receives with one hand only to return with the 
other. He sometimes offers with the hope that he 
will be refused, and a La Rochefoucauld of child- 
hood has imagined the little scene following, whicb 
is often repeated in reality. 

" Do you want some of my cake, Louise ? " 



* De Gruimps, Le livre des meres, p. 28. 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER 215 

"No, little one, keep it yourself. You hear, 
mamma, how good she is ! " answered the older 
sister. 

Aline was delighted and said to herself, " It is 
a pleasure to offer when people do not accept.'' 
And going to her younger sister, she says, "And 
you, tell me, do you want some of my cake, 
Odette?^' 

^" If you want to give it to me.'' 

But then, drawing back her cake, our generous 
child says : " Ah, I know you ! Fie ! that is not 
pretty ! Louise, you see, refuses ! " * 

It is nevertheless true that a certain taste for 
well-doing, which is only an active sympathy, 
ought to be counted in the number of instincts 
common in children, as well as sympathy itself, of 
which they so early give many charming proofs. 

This sj^mpathy they extend to everything: to 
inanimate objects, to animals, as well as to people. 
Edgar Quinet remembers that when about three 
years old he played with a frightful clown doll in 
a silver-lace box-coat, which he valued a hundred 
times above all that Paris offered to his eyes.f 
Who could dispute the treasures of tenderness that 
the hearts of children hold in reserve, after seeing 
them caress their doll or grieve for a lost sparrow ? 
And let no one say that this sensibility is always 
superficial, only skin-deep ! In their first disap- 
pointments in regard to their affections, children 

* Louis Ratisbonne, Les petits hommes. Compare the saying of 
the child who said to his sister, speaking of his lamb : " I should 
like to give it to you, but you know I cannot ; it is mine." 

f Edgar Quinet, Histoire de mes idees, p. 21. 



216 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

are often inconsolable. " My first sorrow/' writes 
Quinet, "dates from my second year. My nurse 
Catherine became engaged. I adored lier. My 
cries, my despair, could not keep lier, nor even ob- 
tain a delay. Sbe married and left me. I almost 
died. Days, months, passed and my desolation 
only incr eased.'' * 

Examples of these particular attachments, of 
these exclusive affections, are frequent in children. 
No less so is diffuse, almost commonplace sympathy 
for all those whom daily intercourse has rendered 
familiar to them. Pierre Loti says : " They tell me 
that when I was very small I would never let any 
member of the family go out of the house, even for 
the shortest trip or visit, without my being assured 
that he would return. ' You will come back ? ' was 
the question I was accustomed to ask anxiously, 
after having followed to the door those who were 
going away." f There was in this case a touching 
cry of distress to those going away, from whom the 
child did not wish to be separated forever. 

The childish sensibility, however, sometimes 
goes beyond the circle of the family. It bursts out 
unexpectedly, in the presence of suffering, of sup- 
posed or real dangers, to which even a stranger is 
exposed. A Russian writer, Mme. Manac^ine, the 
author of a remarkable work on Mental Overtax- 
ing, recounts the following fact, which she wit- 
nessed in the zoological gardens at St. Petersburg : 
'' A great many people were quietly watching diff er- 

* Edgar Quinet, op. cit., p. 19. 

f Pierre Loti, Le Roman d'un enfant, 1890, p. 8. 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHAHACTER 217 

ent tricks performed by an elephant, and especially 
one in which the keeper lay down on the ground, 
and the elephant began to walk over him. There 
was a little girl, two years old, seated on her nnrse's 
arm, who began to cry bitterly and protested, by 
her gestures and her baby talk, against the ele- 
phant's walking over the man's body. They tried 
to quiet her, but, in spite of the keeper's reassuring 
words, in spite of the nurse, who felt herself posi- 
tively disgraced by such indecent conduct, the 
child would not be appeased until the keeper stood 
up and made the elephant ring the bell." * 

It is not forcing matters at all to see in this 
fright, in the emotion of the little two-year-old 
girl, the awakening of the broadest feeling of the 
joint responsibility of the human race. Doubtless 
people will say that at this unaccustomed sight the 
surprised child was afraid. But is not fear for 
others the foundation of love ? 

We shall not insist here on the other forms, on 
the usual forms of childish sympathy — filial love, 
fraternal love. Not to be sceptical on this point, it 
is enough to see the child when he is looking at his 
mother or his sister with a face smiling and gra- 
cious, full of confidence, of trust, and of tender- 
ness. 

A less natural inclination, but one of which it is 
not impossible to perceive the first signs from a 

* Mme. Manaceine, Le Surmenage mental, p. 248, Paris, Mas- 
son, 1890. — Galton, the English philosopher, speaks of the feeling 
that children show in the Zoological Gardens of London when the 
serpents are being given living animals to eat, and that while 
adults remain impassive. 



218 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

very tender age, is the feeling of justice.* I have 
always been struck by the energy that one of my 
sons showed in soliciting for himself the treatment 
that was accorded to his brother — the treatment of 
the most favoured brother — if it was a question of 
an agreeable thing : of the distribution of dainties, 
for instance ; and, on the contrary, in demanding for 
his brother an equal part in the painful obligations 
that w^ere imposed on himself. See children at 
play. " Each one in his turn " is one of the points 
most insisted on. We remember with what intense 
indignation Rousseau, as a child, protested against 
the injustice of which he believed himself to be 
the victim. " The mother," says Michelet, " never 
teaches justice, but she appeals to the sense of jus- 
tice that is in the child by nature." Is it surprising 
that the child feels this sense of justice at first as 
related to himself, that he conceives at first the 
equality of blessings only for himself, the equality 
of what is bad for others ? It is only by reflection 
that he can fill up the gaps of his natural impulses 
and complete the mutilated feeling which he has 
the merit at least of feeling with force. 

Even purely moral feelings like remorse and re- 
pentance can be developed in the child's soul to- 
wards the age of six or seven. Edgar Quinet had 
come to his seventh year — to the age when sins 
count, as the child said. His mother had gravely 
warned him of the importance of this date, after 
which he should be responsible for his actions. 
The result was for several days a redoubled obedi- 

* Michelet goes so far as to say : " Justice is an innate feeling." 



WEAK AND STRONG POINTS OF CHARACTER 219 

* 

ence and irreproachable conduct; but nobody is 
perfect, above all at seven years ! A grave fault 
was committed. The culprit aggravated it by his 
spite at having committed it, and broke out in open 
revolt. But remorse followed soon — and what re- 
morse ! " It was despair without bounds, which no 
one could appease. I wandered around the entire 
day on the outer balcony ; when the peasants who 
were passing drew near, I cried out in a lamen- 
table voice, as I tore my hair, ' I am damned, I 
am damned ! ^ " Doubtless this cry of a conscience 
awake for the first time will not be found, uttered 
with the same desolate conviction, by the lips of all 
children. There may be nothing that approaches 
or resembles it in the multitude of little boys at 
school. But we ought not to study human nature 
in the most graceless specimens ; on the contrary, 
if we wish to arrive at a just appreciation, we 
should seek the exact measure of what humanity 
can do in individuals who, thanks to favourable 
surroundings, have grown up in normal conditions ; 
remembering, moreover, that the child^s good quali- 
ties are often only the reflection of his parents^ vir- 
tues, and that the childish character is, so to speak, 
a piece written in collaboration, in which it is hard 
to separate the work of the two collaborators, na- 
ture and education. 



CHAPTER YII 

MORBID TENDENCIES 

I, The child does not escape insanity. — Cases of insanity are, 
however, rare in early childhood. — Esquirol's opinion. — More 
recent observations. — Insanity in the child under three. — The 
child may be born mad. — The influence of heredity. — Condi- 
tions of childish nature that protect it against insanity ; oppo- 
site conditions. — Intellectual insanity and moral insanity. II. 
Insanity of the muscular activity. — Convulsions, from certain 
points of view, are a mental disease. — Insanity in animals. — 
Hallucinations, or the insanity of external perception. — Physi- 
cal and mental causes of hallucination. — The role of imagina- 
tion in hallucination. — Rare in children, hallucination is more- 
over difficult to observe. — Hallucination in animals. — Exam- 
ples of hallucination in children. — Nightmare. III. General 
insanity. — It does not except the child. — Mania and the de- 
lirium of ideas. — Example of quiet mania in a little girl of 
four. — Example of raving mania. — Monomania not found in 
children. — Possible that the child may recover from mania. — 
Cataleptic insanity. — Moral insanity more frequent than intel- 
lectual insanity. — Character perverted by disease. — Suicidal 
insanity. IV. The insanity of the child, a miniature of the 
insanity of the adult. — In the child we find the elements of 
insanity rather than general and complete insanity. — etiology 
of the child's insanity. — Predominance of physical causes. — 
Diseases, lesions of the brain. — Fright. — Hereditary causes. — 
Insanity transmissible from ancestors to descendants. 



It is a very general opinion, and in any case a 
very natural one, that the child, because of his age, 
220 



MORBID TENDENCIES 221 

is not liable to madness. How could we resign our- 
selves to believing that Nature gives itself up to 
this cruel game of deforming intelligences that she 
has hardly formed; of disorganizing immediately 
what she is only beginning to organize ; finally, of 
throwing into the disorders of mental derangement 
beings that she has only just called to life ? To be 
born to become mad: what an anomaly! What 
apparent contradiction with the laws of Nature ! 
Should not the child escape madness because of the 
energy of a force that is not worn and tired by 
the contact of human things, because of the vigour 
of his faculties still intact ? The author of a recent 
book on this subject * expresses himself in the same 
way : " Madness in children ? Do we not feel a 
deep sadness on reading these words ? Is it then 
possible that this joyous age, careless of the past 
and of the future, living only for the present, igno- 
rant as yet of the sorrows of life, should be struck 
with the most horrible scourge that can afi9.ict a 
thinking being ? " 

Facts do not permit us to indulge this pleas- 
ant illusion. • Children do not escape insanity any 
more than they escape sickness or idiocy. Doubt- 
less insanity is relatively less frequent in the first 
years, and even in the whole period of youth. It is 
between twenty and thirty years that statistics 
begin to show frequent cases of insanity. From 
thirty to forty years there are many — " il y a f oule," 
as Dr. Guislain says. At the age when the facul- 

* La folie chez les enfants, by Dr. Paul Moreau (of Tours). 
Paris, J.-B. Bailliere, 1888. 
17 



222 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

ties liave lost the vigorous freshness of the first 
years, in which the passions are violent, or ardent, 
when man finds himself most absorbed by the 
struggles of life, it is natural that the chances of 
madness should reach the maximum. After forty, 
the proportion diminishes again ; a man is less apt 
to contract mental affections, because, having al- 
ready proved his strength in the crises of life, he 
is strengthened and settled in his reason as he is 
also in his disposition and in his health. Old age, 
alone, with the general weakening of the faculties, 
will raise the number of cases again, dementia be- 
longing to old age. ISTo epoch of life is absolutely 
exempt from mental alienation. The only privilege 
of certain ages, as childhood, is that insanity is 
more rare then. The child — whom we would like 
to study only in the normal development of his 
intelligence and of his sensibility, whom we would 
rather paint only in the pure, graceful unfolding 
of his nature — the child, in spite of the favourable 
conditions that protect him, is not exempt from the 
common law, and he has a title to a special chapter 
in any comparatively complete treatment of mental 
pathology.* 

Esquirol seemed to be of the opposite opinion 
when he wrote, " The child is exempt from mad- 
ness " ; but he immediately corrected this too abso- 
lute rule by adding, " unless the child has some de- 
fects of form at birth, or unless convulsions throw 
him into imbecility or idiocy." \ We add to this that 

* In Dr. Moreau's book, already cited, will be found a collec- 
tion of facts on this subject. (Pp. 13-16.) 

f Esquirol, Des maladies mentales, vol. i, p. 15. 



MORBID TENDENCIES 223 

the list of exceptions admitted by Esquirol is insuf- 
ficient and incomplete. Ail cases of madness in chil- 
dren, even those that Esquirol cites, cannot be placed 
in the too narrow categories of madness caused by a 
defect of form or by a convulsive fit. Moral causes 
of insanity can affect even the child ; witness, for 
instance, the little maniac cared for by Esquirol 
himself, who, up to the age of eight years, had 
shown nothing unusual in his faculties, but who, 
after the siege of Paris in 1814, being frightened 
and worried by all that he saw, fell suddenly into 
most pronounced intellectual disordeiu 

Since Esquirol wrote, many facts have been col- 
lected which extend our knowledge of the subject 
and render some general inductions possible. One 
will find, for example, a long and interesting list 
of observations in Dr. Berckam^s articles (1864).* 
Other cases have been given at different times in the 
Medico-psychological Annals, f Moreover, the ma- 
jority of the authorities on derangement no longer 
hesitate to recognise the possibility of madness in 
children. Maudsley, in his Pathology of Mind, has 
set this new aspect of mental diseases in relief by 
devoting to it an interesting chapter entitled The 
Insanity of Early Life. 

It seems, however, that observers still dislike to 

* See the German periodical, Correspondenz Blatt, 1864. 

f Notice especially the following volumes of the Annals : 1849, 
p. 72; 1855, p. 60; iUd., p. 527; 1857, p. 218; 1861, p. 305 ; 1867, 
p. 326 etseq. ; 1870, p. 260 et seq. See also in the Journal de mede- 
cine psychologique, 1858, the article by Brierre de Boismont, Re- 
cherches sur alienation mentale des enfants et particulierement 
des jeunes gens. 



224 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

admit tlie existence of insanity in tlie very young 
child. Towards the eighth, or the tenth year facts 
are too numerous and too characteristic for it to 
be possible to deny them. Dr. Morel says : " There 
is not a specialist on insanity that cannot cite veri- 
table intellectual alienations in children from six 
to fifteen years old." * Six years, then, would be 
the lowest limit at which the child could become 
mad. Facts contradict this opinion, too, and prove 
that the age of madness should be placed as early 
as the first beginnings of life. Esquirol recalls the 
observations made by Dr. Franck of a maniac 
twenty-four months old.f Haslam speaks of a lit- 
tle girl that became deranged when about three 
years old and of a boy two years old that was af- 
flicted with insanity without any known cause. J 

Stoll tells* the story of a child that became in- 
sane as the result of vaccination.* We shall have 
occasion to report analogous examples of madness 
coming as early as it did in these cases. The 
alienation of the intelligence, then, can immedi- 
ately follow and even accompany its first awaken- 
ing. It is not enough to say that the child can 
become insane ; the truth is that sometimes he is 
born insane. 

Nothing is more intelligible, moreover, a pri- 
ori, even supposing that it could not be demon- 
strated by experience, than the possibility of mad- 
ness in children. It is enough to consider the fact 

* Morel, Traite des maladies mentales, p. 100. 
f Esquirol, op. cit. 

X Haslam, Observations on Madness, London, 1809. 

* See Annales medico-psychologiques, 1867, i, p. 339. 



MORBID TENDENCIES 225 

that tlie new-born cliild is not an entirely new 
being. He has a past — that of his family and of 
his race. He is heir to a large estate of disposi- 
tions, of aptitudes, of good and of bad qualities — 
a patrimony prepared for him by the actions of 
his ancestors. 

His individual nature reaches, by deep and hid- 
den roots, into the common nature of the family to 
which he belongs. There may be innate madness, 
then, as there is innate reason. The child may 
come into the world with morbid predispositions, 
moral as well as physical. Doubtless most often 
the unhealthy germs of the soul will not develop 
immediately ; they will cover long years, they will 
remain in a latent state until they break out under 
the action of circumstances. Sometimes the pre- 
disposition transmitted to the new individual comes 
forth only on a given day, on a date in some way 
fixed in advance. A man marries, becomes mad 
at a certain time ; his son, born before this time, 
will have a fit of madness that will come on the 
same date as his father's. But hereditary mad- 
ness does not always know these reprieves and 
these delays. It sometimes bursts forth from the 
first day, particularly when the derangement of 
parents has been coexistent with the act of gen- 
eration or of childbirth. Crichton, according to 
Greeding, reports a very striking example : " A 
woman about forty years old, really insane, but 
otherwise in good health, gave birth, on the 20th 
of January, 1763, to a male child who was imme- 
diately raving mad. When he was brought to our 
asylum, January 24:th, he had such strength in his 



226 LATER INFANCY OP THE CHILD 

legs and his arms that four women could hardly 
hold him. These fits ended in inexplicable bursts 
of laughter ; or the child, in a fit of anger, broke 
and tore everything within reach — his clothes, his 
coverings, his bed. We did not dare leave him 
alone, lest he should have climbed on to the benches 
or the tables, or even tried to crawl out into the 
streets. A little while afterward, when his teeth 
began to come, the child died." * Here madness had 
been transmitted by the mother to the child, by a 
sort of direct communication, from hand to hand, 
so to speak. The derangement of the mother was 
continued without interruption and with analogous 
characteristics in the crazy movements of the son. 

Morbid heredity, then, does not act solely at a 
distance, and as by a shot at long range ; its action 
may be immediate and instantaneous. What usu- 
ally retards the explosion of evil are the partic- 
ular conditions of the moral life of the child. The 
very weakness of the childish intelligence is a 
guarantee, a protection, against madness. The first 
condition for a cause of destruction to act is that 
there be something to destroy. When there is 
nothing, as they say, the king loses his rights. 

On other sides, however, the child's nature of- 
fers an easy prey to the invasion of madness. In 
the midst of so many pathological variations, there 
are two very characteristic, very distinct forms 
of mental derangement — intellectual insanity and 
moral insanity, the former consisting essentially in 
the disorder of ideas and absurdities of belief, the 

* See Maudsley, op. ciL, p. 258. 



MORBID TENDENCIES 227 

latter in the morbidness of desires and tlie perver- 
sity of actions. What really constitutes the first 
is the absence of intermediary ideas, which in the 
normal state interpose, so to speak, between ideas 
and convictions — which prevent the foolish idea 
from getting the upper hand and installing itself 
in the mind — which at least dislodge it — which 
finally correct the illusions and the hallucinations 
of the senses. So, what characterizes moral in- 
sanity is the absence of will — that is to say, of the 
moderating power which, in the sane man, places 
itself between the impulse and the act, and stops 
the agent at the moment when he is about to obey 
the impulse of instinct or of blind desire. So the 
child, by the poverty of his remembrances and the 
slenderness of his intelligence, and by the inertness 
of his will, finds himself, from these two points of 
view, in a situation most favourable to the develop- 
ment of madness. If insane ideas once penetrate 
his consciousness, they meet no obstacle there ; his 
memory is too weak, too inexperienced to resist the 
false conceptions that hallucination suggests. So 
morbid impulses transmitted by heredity, which 
perhaps the adult will succeed in overcoming, are 
irresistible to the child ; his vacillating will opposes 
no barrier to bad instincts. When madness threat- 
ens a grown man, it must first triumph over a tried 
intelligence, long settled in its beliefs, so that even 
hallucination may coexist with reason ; besides, it 
must conquer the energy of will that age has 
strengthened, before which, at each instant, the ir- 
reflective suggestions of passion, the absurd capri- 
cious desires that move even the sanest mind, must 



228 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

stop. But when madness unfortunately falls upon 
the child, it is immediately mistress of the place ; 
for it is in an open country without defence, where 
it can safely carry on its ravages. 

We cannot doubt, then, the possibility of mad- 
ness in children ; but this general truth once estab- 
lished, we must go into details, seek under what 
forms the phenomena of mental derangement pre- 
sent themselves in souls badly balanced and only in 
process of formation ; we must follow, finally, the 
parallel evolution of the faculties and of the dis- 
eases that attack them. 



II 

It is by muscular activity that the life of the 
child, first shows itself. In the first daj^s of his 
existence, the child, as we have said, may be defined 
as a moving being. His movements are spontane- 
ous, automatic, or reflex, caused by internal energy 
called forth by excitations from without. Will 
does not govern them yet, but in this almost un- 
conscious mobility of the child, when no morbid 
influence is at work, there is a natural order, some- 
times an involuntary and unsought-f or grace. Let 
sickness come, and, in place of these regular rhyth- 
mic movements, there will appear a mobility abso- 
lutely without order, fits of terrible agitation, and 
finally that curse of childhood called convulsions. 

Convulsions ought not to be considered as a 
simple physical malady ; they are, in certain ways, 
a real mental malady. The proof of this is the ac- 
tion that they often exercise on the future develop- 



MORBID TENDENCIES 229 

ment of intelligence ; not only do they leave cor- 
poreal infirmities in the child that they have at- 
tacked violently ; they are not content with dislo- 
cating limbs, with disfiguring the face ; they also 
sometimes reach the intelligence, they make the 
little patient an idiot for life. " We often see 
idiocy follow the convulsions of first childhood." * 
The proof of this is found in the mental troubles 
that accompany them when they occur in older 
children: the complete loss of knowledge, a sort 
of stupor, is their immediate effect. Moreover, in 
themselves, since they are an irregularity of the 
muscular activity, convulsions come under the do- 
main of psychology. We might say that they are a 
delirium of the muscles, just as delirium properly 
so-called is, as it were, a convulsion of the mind. 
At the age when the intelligence is not yet 
awakened, convulsions are the only form of mad- 
ness possible. While in the adult they are compli- 
cated by all the disorders of mental alienation, by 
derangement of all the faculties, in the child they 
are produced, so to speak, in a state of isolation. 
The morbid situation that they betray can extend 
only to the faculty that is developed — the faculty 
of motion. Notice, moreover, that convulsions rep- 
resent the outward appearance — the mask, as it were 
— of insanity. Nothing more resembles a maniac 
twisting about in mad agitation, a struggling py- 
thoness, one possessed by the devil and being dragged 
now this way, now that, than the little child under- 
going the strain of a convulsive fit. In animals, also, 

* Trousseau, Clinique medicale, 1868, vol. ii, p. 181. 



230 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

mental affections show themselves by convulsions or 
by symptoms much like them. The fishermen of 
the Volga know a kind of fish that they regard as 
susceptible to madness, because they swim about im- 
petuously in a circle. The elephant, usually so calm 
and mild, is sometimes seized by a sort of frenzy that 
plunges him into a furious agitation; he throws 
himself violently on all that he meets — men, ani- 
mals, things — and destroys everything in his reach. 
In these two cases — in the elephant become destruc- 
tive, as in the child a prey to convulsions — the prin- 
ciple of the disorder is the same. A morbid cause 
has suppressed the natural bond that subordinates 
the individuaFs movements to the normal needs of 
his organs or to the impressions received from with- 
out — a morbid cause has turned the muscular ac- 
tivity loose and given up to a sort of epileptic fury 
all the motor elements of the organism. 

If we consider the nature of the causes that pro- 
duce convulsions in the child, we shall be more dis- 
posed to admit the mental character of this patholog- 
ical fact. But the convulsive fit sometimes results 
from an accident. Trousseau cites a very curious 
example of this. A physician, called in for a little 
child, chanced to take off the patient^s bonnet ; he 
saw a bit of thread on the child's head, and on try- 
ing to remove it, he drew out a long needle deeply 
embedded in the brain. The needle once out, the 
convulsions ceased immediately.* Most often, how. 
ever, convulsions come from inward causes, from 
cerebral affections transmitted by heredity. They 

* Trousseau, ojp. cit., p. 166. 



MORBID TENDENCIES 231 

are produced in individuals endowed with, a par- 
ticular nervous susceptibility, which passes with, 
life from ancestor to descendant, and which shows 
itself sometimes by one phenomenon, sometimes by 
another — by a fit of convulsions in the child, by 
epilepsy or hysteria in the adult. " Look carefully 
into the matter, and perhaps you will not find a 
single family of insane people in which epileptic 
convulsions in childhood have not played a certain 
part. Even in families that are simply nervous, 
including no really insane people in their ranks as 
yet, the appearance of the epilepsy of childhood, 
showing itself in several children successively, ought 
to be considered as a symptom of bad augury.^^ * It 
is the first signal of the possible invasion of mad- 
ness in a family hitherto sane. 

Convulsions, then, may be considered as the first 
step of madness in the child ; hallucination is the 
second. The new-born child does not take long to 
become something more than a little moving being. 
He very soon shows himself a sensible being, ca- 
pable of perception and of sensation. He sees, he 
hears, he touches. Intelligence opens to the repre- 
sentations of the outer world. Each day a piece of 
material reality is detached, under the form of per- 
ception, from the ensemble of things, and pene- 
trates the child's brain. At the same time the sen- 
sibility is aroused, and a multitude of little pleas- 
ures and of little pains, like the waves that ripple 

* See Annales medico-psychologiqiies, 1879, i, p. 55. Article 
by Dr. H. Martin on Alcoholism of Parents considered as a Cause 
of Epilepsy in their Descendants. 



232 LATER INFANCY 0¥ THE CHILD 

the surface of the lake, come to disturb the super- 
ficial parts of the nervous system. Memory takes 
possession of these acquisitions of the senses, and 
remembrances form. The idea, or at least the 
image, fixes itself in the mind. As a result of this, 
from the first months of childhood there is a possi- 
bility of dreams and of hallucinations. 

Hallucination is a complex phenomenon, all the 
forms of which we need not here describe. It is 
hardly possible to-day to doubt that the false per- 
ceptions which form it result at once from a lesion, 
from an alteration, from a disorder of some sort 
that attacks the organs of the senses, and from a 
deeper perturbation that affects the nervous centres 
and consequently the memory and the imagination. 
We can accept neither the extreme opinion of Es- 
quirol, of Leuret, of Ldlut, for whom hallucination 
is only an idea made objective, and consequently 
a purely mental perturbation; nor the contrary 
hypothesis of Luys, who sees in hallucination only 
a purely physiological fact, only a lesion localized 
in the sense organs and the nervous ganglions. 
Doubtless the participation of the sense organ in 
the illusions of one suffering from hallucination is 
shown by facts, notably by those that specialists 
call "divided hallucinations." The patient sees 
with his left eye an appearance that is not visible 
to the right eye. So, in the case of the displace- 
ment of the image that flits from one point to an- 
other, when one moves the eyeball. So, still, in the 
case of the precise observation establishing the fact 
that hallucinations sometimes accompany diseases 
of the eye — ulceration of the cornea, for instance. 



MORBID TENDENCIES 233 

The participation of the intelligence is no less 
certain. One suffering from a hallucination of 
sight will see celestial lights or infernal flames, ac- 
cording to whether he is religious or not. Habits 
of character, familiar thoughts, inveterate feelings, 
give a special character to each hallucination, ac- 
cording to the individuals. Inhabitants of cities 
have more complicated hallucinations than do 
peasants. In a word, the imagination furnishes the 
materials for hallucination. It is even probable 
that it is most often the point of departure and 
the cause. Imagination excited, exalted, troubles 
the senses in their turn, and causes there illusory 
representations. Normal conditions are then de- 
stroyed and, as it were, reversed. Indeed, while a 
perception is a sensation that has become an idea, 
hallucination is an idea that has become a sensa- 
tion. 

Imagination is still too little developed in the 
child for us to expect to meet hallucinatory phe- 
nomena very frequently. Moreover, in these little 
heads, hardly inhabited by their few remembrances, 
there can be only short hallucinations; nothing 
that resembles the complicated illusions which 
make a picture, and which show the variety of 
their conceptions in the mind of the mature man, 
weighed down with ideas and overladen with pas- 
sions. When the mind has grown, when the mem- 
ory has been enriched, the illusion may draw un- 
stintingly from the vast store of ideas. In the 
child, all is foreshortened — the troubles and the dis- 
orders, no less than the normal and regular opera- 
tions of thought. 



/ 



234- LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

On the other hand, it is evident that in the little 
child not yet able to speak, even if a hallucination 
is produced, it easily escapes the control of the ob- 
server. Rare in themselves, facts of this kind are 
still more rarely observable. We should not be 
astonished, then, that the material on this point is 
so scarce. Still, if our data were even fewer than 
they are, analogy would give us the right to affirm 
a priori the possibility of childish hallucination. 
It is a fact that the child dreams ; the little dreamer 
of two years or even less, often really shouts with 
laughter at the remembrance of his play and the 
amusements of the evening before, or cries with 
pain, as though terrified in his dreams. We see 
him smile as though at a sight that pleases him. 
Later he talks, he gesticulates. Whatever Tiede- 
mann may say, these manifestations of the sleeping 
child cannot be explained merely by the mechan- 
ical irritability of the body; they presuppose a 
slight work of imagination and of memory, of fleet- 
ing impressions that cross the brain. 

When trying to reason exactly on the child^s 
nature, we should not fear to seek points of com- 
parison in animals. The child, in action if not in 
power, is surely in many respects what the animal 
will be all its life. What observation discovers in 
one, may probably be attributed to the other. But 
the animal sometimes presents real insanity, and 
hallucinatory phenomena, and this illustrates our 
thesis further. Recent experiments establish the 
fact that the dog, for instance, which we knew 
could dream, could bark in his dreams, may also 
be the victim of hallucination. Dr. Magnan, by 



MORBID TENDENCIES 235 

injecting alcohol into the veins of a healthy dog 
saw savage fits of fury break out ; the dog raised 
himself, barked furiously, and seemed to be strug- 
gling with imaginary dogs ; after which he quieted 
down, still growling once or twice in the direction 
of his supposed enemy.* 

It has happened that imprudence, or accident, 
has caused analogous disorders in children, fur- 
nishing the direct proof of the existence of hallu- 
cination in children. The absorption of poisonous 
substances has been enough to throw a baby of 
fourteen months and a half into a singular state, 
verging on insanity, in which hallucination played 
its part. The case has been given by Dr. Thore in 
the Annales medico-psychologiques.f A little girl, 
fifteen months old, in the absence of her mother, 
had swallowed several grains of Datura stramo- 
nium. Almost immediately the child went into 
a state of agitation that frightened the parents 
greatly. The physician called in made the fol- 
lowing observations : " A great change had taken 
place in vision ; the child seemed deprived of sight ; 
she did not look at any of the objects that sur- 
rounded her, and paid no attention to those that 
pleased her and that she usually wanted. They 
showed her a watch and her ordinary toys, but 
they did not attract her attention ; on the contrary, 
she seemed to be pursuing imaginary objects, placed 

* See Archives de physiologie normale et pathologique, March 
and May, 1873. 

f The article is entitled Un mot sur les hallucinations dans la 
premiere enfance. (Vol. i of the Annales, 1859, pp. 72-79.) 



236 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

at a certain distance from her, whicli she tried to 
reacli by holding out her arms, and to grasp with 
her hand. She even raised herself up, resting on 
the sides of her cradle, as if to reach them more 
easily. She moved her hands in space, as if seek- 
ing objects that fled from her." 

In this case there is evidently something more 
than disordered convulsions. The child showed 
very plainly by her repeated movements in the 
same direction that she was the sport of an imag- 
inary vision ; being possessed by subjective images, 
her eyes no longer saw real objects. 

In this case, as is natural in a very little child, 
the hallucination is the result of an accidental and 
external cause, a sort of transient poisoning.* But 
if we examine children more advanced in age, above 
all children particularly endowed with imagination 
and destined by their nervous nature to become 
artists or poets, we shall meet with hallucination 
of another order, suggested by the very vivacity of 
their minds, by a superexcitation of their facul- 
ties. Such, for instance, is the case of Hartley 
Coleridge, f When a little child, he imagined that 

* Hallucination in children is sometimes caused by physi- 
cal disease. " A little girl under my charge had a fever. She 
awoke very suddenly one morning, uttering horrible cries; she 
pointed anxiously to one corner of the room where she saw great 
black figures, a devil that threatened her by gesture and by 
word. In the evening she had another hallucination of sight. 
She thonght great sheets of water were falling from the ceiling." 
(Annales medico-psychologiques, 1849, p. 77.) 

f See in The Journal of Mental Science, April, 1860, an article 
by J. Crichton Browne, On the Psychological Maladies of Child- 
hood. 



MORBID TENDENCIES 237 

lie saw a small cataract near his father's house. 
To this cataract there was soon added an island, to 
which he gave a name. Little by little this world 
that his fancy had created became for him a real 
world, in which he journeyed every day. When 
people humoured his fancy by asking him how he 
communicated with this enchanted island, he drew 
his inspiration from a tale in the Arabian Nights 
and answered, " I go there and return on the wings 
of a great bird." If we believe the witnesses of this 
psychological fact, Coleridge was really convinced 
of the reality of his vision. His poetic dream had 
taken shape, and the child^s imagination, height- 
ened by precocious reading, was its own dupe. 
Who can say whether in the case of visionary 
dreamers the visions of ripe age have not been pre- 
pared for in the same way from the first years of 
life by little trifling hallucinations which have in- 
sensibly accustomed them to live in fancy ? 

It has been often said, in these last years, that 
the study of abnormal and morbid facts will shed 
new light on the nature of the sane and natural 
mind. Psychologists cannot fail to profit by the 
large number of asylums and by the works of spe- 
cialists on the subject of insanity. But the oppo- 
site is not less true : the most ordinary facts of life 
sometimes throw a great deal of light on the pecu- 
liarities of insanity. There is a deep-seated rela- 
tion between morbid psychology and normal psy- 
chology; and if the science of mental alienation, 
in spite of the great advance of this century, has 
not succeeded in clearing up what Esquirol calls 
"the chaos of human miseries," it is perhaps be- 
18 



238 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

cause it is still waiting for psychology to furnisli an 
exact description of the moral faculties — above all, 
a precise analysis of their natural development. 

In the particular case that occupies us, it is cer- 
tain that the commonest facts of childish life can 
help us to understand how the irregular state of 
hallucination is produced. There is nothing more 
active, more alive, than the work of imagination, 
even in the first years. Precisely because reflec- 
tion brings no corrective, and because it is not ham- 
pered as it will be later by an abundance of ideas, 
the childish imagination represents things to itself 
with an unheard-of vivacity. Take a child into a 
shop, into an apartment that he has never seen ; his 
eyes, ferreting out all the corners, will soon have 
seen every object, and, even after a rapid inspec- 
tion, his memory will keep a faithful and precise 
remembrance of the most insignificant details. Is 
it astonishing that a being endowed with such 
prompt imagination should easily confuse his con- 
ceptions and his perceptions, images and reality ? 

Mghtmare, which is, as it were, a hallucination 
of the sleeping man, has been frequently observed 
in children, and these " illusions of sleep " continue 
during the night. Dr. Thord says: "At the mo- 
ment when children awake, even after their eyes 
are wide open, they see distinctly traced on the 
wall near them more or less terrifying objects, 
which they describe as well as their intelligence 
will permit." Sometimes, on the contrary, the 
awakening entirely effaces the impressions of the 
night. Maudsley says : " The child begins to cry 
when sound asleep; his eyes are open, his limbs 



MORBID TENDENCIES 239 

sliake with, fear ; he does not recognise his parents 
or the friends that try to calm him. But in the 
morning he no longer remembers the fright that he 
has ielt." * 

It will be noticed that hallucinations of sight 
are most frequent in children. It is because the 
new-born child is all eyes before he is all ears. 
Dr. Berckham, however, reports the observation of 
a child three years old affected by a hallucination 
of hearing, f 

Under whatever form it may present itself, and 
whatever sense may be affected, hallucination is 
only an element of insanity, a partial insanity. In 
the child, as in the adult man, the alienation of the 
outer perception may be coexistent with the gen- 
eral health of the other faculties and be followed 
by no other delirious symptom. It remains for us 
to show that general manias, in which hallucina- 
tion may be mingled but which it does not consti- 
tute, which affect the mind and include the gravest 
disorders, are not spared to childhood. 

Ill 

Mania — that is to say, the incoherence and the 
delirium of ideas, furious agitation or wandering 
of the thought — seems to be the most usual form of 
intellectual madness in children. On this point the 
majority of observers agree. Dr. Delasiauve,| Dr. 
Le Paulmier, in his thesis entitled Mental Affec- 

* Maudsley, op. cit., p. 203. 

f See Annales medico-psychologiques, 1867, i, p. 327. 

X Ibid., 1855, i, p. 527. Special Form of Mania in Children. 



240 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

tions in Children and Mania in Particnlar,* and 
Dr. Morel f declare that insanity shows itself in 
children most often by mania. 

Here are the most remarkable cases collected by 
specialists. We shall cite first the very complete 
observation of Dr. Chatelain, who has had occa- 
sion himself to study a child four years and a few 
months old, the daughter of a farmer in the Jura. 
Two causes — the one physical, measles, the other 
moral, a keen fright caused by the sight of a fire- 
engine — had acted on the child's weak constitution, 
and had brought about the strange state from 
"which she suffered. Dr. Chatelain says: "Louise 
is queer, distracted; she answers at random the 
questions that are asked her. One day her father 
told her to bring her doll to him. She went to get 
it, but brought nothing, and said, ^Here it is^; her 
hands and her arms made a gesture as though she 
were giving something, but her hand was empty. 
After she became ill her character changed per- 
ceptibly ; she completely lost the timidity natural 
to her age. In the presence of two strange physi- 
cians, who examined her, she felt no fear, even no 
restraint. If a question was asked her, she an- 
swered quickly, without hesitation, but she an- 
swered wrongly." The observer goes on to report 
an entire conversation, showing a complete disor- 
der of ideas in a child otherwise intelligent, whose 
malady could not be confounded with idiocy. 

The preceding is an example of calm, quiet ma- 

* Le Paulmier's thesis dates from 1856. 

t See Annales medieo-psychologiques, 1870, ii, pp. 260-269. 



MORBID TENDENCIES 241 

nia. However, the little girl in question had also 
fits of raving mania, shown by incessant move- 
ment, by tears, by cries, and by threats against 
the life of her parents. In other cases, agitation is 
the permanent characteristic of the child^s mania. 
Griesinger says : " We see in children of three or 
four years fits of crying, with a longing to strike, 
to bite, and to destroy whatever falls into their 
hands." * 

In children a little older, cases of mania become 
still more frequent. Dr. Morel cites the instance of 
a child of five who, after having been frightened, 
fell into a state of " continued turbulence and ex- 
acerbation." f Under the name of " raving monopa- 
thy," Dr. Guislain calls attention to a malady of 
the same kind in a little girl of seven years ; in this 
case the cause of the trouble was a blow received 
on the head. J Esquirol speaks of a child eight 
years old who was afQicted with mania following 
typhoid fever. And as moral causes always alter- 
nate with physical ones in the generation of mad- 
ness, we find in Foville the case of a boy of ten who 
became a maniac as the result of having read too 
much. 

It is remarkable that to these numerous exam- 
ples of childish mania, the list of which might be 
prolonged, the observer cannot add a single case of 
monomania. The fixity of mad ideas is as incom- 
patible with the mania of the child as the fixity of 

* Griesinger, Pathologie und Therapie der psychischen Krank- 
heiten, second edition, p. 147. 
f Dr. Morel, op. cit., p. 102. 
X Dictionnaire de medecine, 1829. 



242 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

reasonable ideas with, liis normal state.* The little 
maniac observed by Dr. Chatelain changed the 
direction of her thoughts unceasingly. " Ordi- 
narily an idea of some sort absorbed her exclu- 
sively during a day or two, then was effaced to 
give place to another.^' Monomania seems to be 
at first a sign of great intellectual weakness, since 
in it all the ideas, all the feelings, are as it were 
annihilated before a single thought, which has be- 
come ruling mistress of the consciousness. How- 
ever, if we reflect on it, monomania presupposes a 
certain force of intelligence, a certain power of con- 
centration, since it is a delirium entirely system- 
atized. The child, with his mobile and inconstant 
ideas, with his wavering and as yet not firmly 
established impressions, may easily be delirious — 
that is, may pass from one idea to another without 
sequence and without reason ; but there does not 
seem to be in him that morbid aptitude for group- 
ing in a permanent way all of his faculties around 
a certain insane conception. Doubtless this is why 
his intellectual disorder shows itself by the rapid 
and incoherent succession, by the incessant flight 
of ideas rushing distractedly one after the other, 
rather than by the obstinate concentration of all 
the forces of the mind in one direction. 

As to the development of mania in the child, it 
is difiicult, in the present state of observations, to 
describe its history with any precision. The ter- 

* The mobility of childhood is such that a determinate order 
of delirious ideas cannot, at this age, take possession of the mind 
and become systematized, as is seen at a more advanced time of 
life." (Grriesinger, Mental Diseases.) 



MORBID TENDENCIES 243 

mination varies : sometimes death, follows very 
soon, sometimes idiocy for life succeeds the deliri- 
ous attacks, sometimes, and very frequently^ recov- 
ery reestablishes order and peace in these little 
souls troubled for an instant. The majority of the 
little maniacs cared for by Dr. Delasiauve and 
Dr. Le Paulmier recovered in a somewhat limited 
space of time. 

The most characteristic trait noted in the still 
incomplete study of the question is the frequent 
appearance in children affected by mania, of real 
ecstatic crises, of what Maudsley calls " cataleptoid 
insanity.^' Nothing is more conformable to the 
logic of nature than these periods of remission^ 
so to speak, of the calm sleep of the soul following 
periods of agitation and violence. For hours, for 
entire days, the child lies in a sort of mystic con- 
templation ; turbulence and loquacity are replaced 
by immobility and stupor. The eyes are fixed, the 
look meditative.* In certain cases, it is probable 
that hallucination explains the motionless attitude 
and the attentive pose of the ecstatic child. Dr. 
Chatelaines little maniac " seemed to see and hear 
things that did not exist. From time to time she 

* See Annales medico-psychologiques, 1855, i, p. 527. Forme 
maniaque speciale chez les enfants, by Dr. Delasiauve. Immobil- 
ity is not the exclusive attitude of these ecstatics. "In some of 
these maniacs there is a slow rhythmic movement like that of the 
marionettes. Most of them, not wishing to be distracted from 
their thoughts, seem insensible to the words that are addressed to 
them ; others answer by vague monosyllables, by gestures, or by an 
ironical smile that betrays their uncertainty. The crises finally 
may be broken into by turbulent cries, the evident result of fan- 
cied sensations." 



244 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

turned her ear suddenly as tliougli some one had 
spoken, and listened attentively for several sec- 
onds/^ In other cases, it is probable that the child, 
as is the case with all ecstatics, though appearing 
to think a great deal, really thinks of nothing. 

We have the right to expect that science, whose 
attention is now fully awake to the subject of mor- 
bid phenomena, of abnormal states of the child^'s 
consciousness, will hereafter determine, with more 
precision than we can at present, the different forms 
of mania and the other troubles of the intelligence 
in the first years of life. What we know in ad- 
vance, by reason of the laws that preside over the 
development of the faculties, is that observers will 
find cases of moral insanity much more often than 
cases of intellectual insanity, properly so called. 
We know what the specialists call moral insanity, 
affective or impulsive, which is sometimes only the 
outward manifestation of the disorder of the mind, 
but which, in other circumstances, by a strange 
division of the faculties, has to bear only on incli- 
nations, on instincts, perverts only the will, and 
leaves the intelligence intact. It is evident that 
insanity of this sort is more consonant than any 
other with the nature of the child. Mania and de- 
lirium alter judgment, reasoning ; but judgment is 
acquired, reasoning is acquired . Some time is neces- 
sary for the child to learn to reason ; consequently, 
some time is necessary also for him to come to the 
point of reasoning falsely. But moral insanity 
affects the inclinations, the instincts, and all that 
is innate, immediately transmitted by heredity ; all 
that is ready to act from the very first days of life. 



MORBID TENDENCIES 245 

Is it surprising, then, that in the youngest children 
we so often find morbid tendencies, unhealthy im- 
pulses, which cause most extravagant actions ? 

Dr. Renaudin mentions a child of ordinary in- 
telligence whose thought showed no delirium, no 
incoherence, but who was subject to a real insanity 
of action and of will. The malady advanced by 
attacks of irresistible violence, to which always 
corresponded a complete insensibility of the skin. 
When questioned as to his bad conduct, the child 
was silent, or answered that he could not control 
himself. The violence was such, the observer adds, 
" that we did not doubt its being able to go to the 
point of murder." * 

Another example of impulsive insanity, leading 
to homicide, is furnished by Esquirol.f It is the 
case of a little girl of seven and a half who, having 
conceived a profound aversion for her stepmother, 
who had always treated her with kindness, tried 
several times to kill her, as well as her little brother. 
Her father threatened to have her put in prison, 
and she answered, "That will not prevent my 
mother and my brother from dying, and me from 
killing them." When submitted to a sort of cross- 
examination, these were some of her answers : 

Question. Why do you want to kill your mother ? 

Answer. Because I do not love her. 

Q. Why do you not love her ? A. I do not know. 

Q. Has she maltreated you ? A. No. 

Q. You have a little brother ? A. Yes. 

* Maiidsley, op. cit., p, 287. 

f Esqiiirol, op. cit., p. 386 et seq. 



246 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

Q. He is out at nurse, and you have never seen 
liini ? A. Yes. 

Q. Do you like him ? A. Wo. 

Q. Would you like to have him die ? A. Yes. 

Q. Do you want to kill him ? A. Yes. I have 
asked papa to bring him home from the nurse so 
that I may kill him. 

Doubtless in this last example we have to do 
with criminal will rather than with real insanity. 
Still, the child's obstinacy, her cold-blooded cynical 
attitude, the absence even of motives sufficient to 
explain her fixed idea of murder, all authorize us 
to consider her perversity as a case of mental pa- 
thology. 

Dr. Prichard, who, as all know, first clearly dis- 
tinguished the characteristics of moral insanity, 
cites the following : '^ A little girl of seven years 
had been, up to this age, gentle, gay, affectionate, 
very intelligent, when she was one day sent home 
by her teacher because of a marked change that 
had taken place in her conduct. She had become 
rough, rude, and uu governable. Her appetite was 
perverted to the point of her preferring raw vege- 
tables to her usual diet. Her health changed. Only 
her intellectual faculties escaped. The child recov- 
ered at the end of two months.^' * This example is 
especially interesting because it shows us moral in- 
sanity suddenly invading a character hitherto well 
regulated, an intelligence already awakened, and 
advancing by passing attacks, as do the majority of 
physical or mental maladies. 

* Prichard, On Insanity, 1835, p. 55. 



MORBID TENDENCIES 247 

It would take too long to reproduce here all the 
cases of character vitiated by disease that have been 
recorded of childhood.* 

Though we do not consider all tricky children 
crazy, though we do not impute to insanity all the 
oddities of the sensibility, still we do not hesitate 
to say — and the art of education ought to profit by 
this fact — that the eccentricities of children often 
have a morbid cause. J. Crichton Browne has col- 
lected cases of kleptomania, of dipsomania, of pan- 
tophobia, in very young children. f Wickedness 
often acquires such proportions in these weak 
natures that it ought to be considered as a malady 
rather than as a vice. Browne tells the story of a 
young English nobleman who was possessed of 
such instincts of cruelty that, in order to occupy 
him, his father had to send him to the country 
and give him the duties of butcher among his farm- 
ers. His greatest pleasure was to kill fowls and 
hares by torturing them. When the workmen put 
up scaffoldings to work on their buildings, the 

* We cite the following observations, which belong to the same 
category. First, a little girl eight years old, whose affectionate 
feelings had undergone a complete perversion ; she was often heard 
to say that she would kill her grandmother in order to get her 
clothes. Gradually she recovered, and there remained no trace 
of her old state, beyond a tendency to sadness. (See Annales 
medico-psychologiques, 1867, i, p. 331.) Second, a boy of six, ob- 
served by John Mislar (see The Lancet, May 23, 1863), who avoided 
the caresses of his parents, and responded to them only by fits of 
violence. His sister died, and he set fire to the cradle in which 
rested the body of the dead child. His sense of taste was com- 
pletely depraved, and seemed satisfied by salt and by fish-bones. 

f See The Journal of Mental Science, April, 1860. 



248 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

cliild tried in every way possible to make tHera 
fall.* 

We should like to believe, at the very outset, 
tbat the suicide raania finds no victims among 
children. The idea of voluntary death and the 
character of childhood seem incompatible. How 
is it possible that a being hardly created should 
want to destroy itself, to disown itself; that the in- 
stinct of preservation should not come out victori- 
ous from the crises to which the childish sensibility 
is submitted ? Still, statistics prove that the suicide 
of a child, though rare, is far from being an ex- 
ceptional fact. Childish pain, which our indiffer- 
ence too often disdains, can attain an unheard-of 
degree of keenness. We do not know how to under- 
stand children ; we judge them according to our- 
selves. We do not take into account the fact that 
futile causes may develop in these naive hearts 
violent emotions equal to our greatest pains. What 
is only a scratch to a grown man becomes a deep 
wound to the child. We do not imagine all the 
anger and the fright that there may be in the child^s 
cries, all the anguish and despair that his dumb 
attitude conceals. As Malebranche said : "An apple 
and a sugar-plum make as deep impressions on the 
child's brain as offices and dignities make on that 
of a man of forty years.'' The souls of children are 
like the mind of a man asleep, in which the slight- 
est sensations are transformed and exaggerated. 
Too harsh scoldings for a slight fault, a sudden 

* Dr. Paul Moreaa mentions a child of four years who armed 
himself with a knife, and, leaning on the cradle of a baby ten 
months old, horribly mutilated its face {op. cit., p. 256). 



MORBID TENDENCIES 249 

deception in tlie case of a promised pleasure or an 
expected reward, too vivid impressions before a 
sight that would not affect us — in fine, the most 
trifling cause may trouble the child deeply enough 
to call forth the extreme resolution of suicide, which 
always contains something morbid. 

It will be found of advantage to consult the 
study published in 1855, on this subject, in the 
Annales m^dico-psychologiques, by Dr. Durand- 
Fardel.* The author reports there several exam- 
ples of the suicide of children. He says: "We 
have collected twenty-six examples of children 
suicides between the ages of five and fourteen 
years ; one was five, two were nine years old ; two, 
ten years ; five, eleven years ; seven, twelve years ; 
seven, thirteen years ; two, fourteen years." The 
Comptes g^n^raux de la justice criminelle, from 
1835 to 1844, show that out of 25,760 suicides in 
France, 129 took place before the age of sixteen 
years, f 

The study of the causes of suicide is always 
heartrending; in children it is, in addition, espe- 
cially instructive and curious. Nothing could be 
more trifling than the motives that sometimes act 
on the weak brains of these suicides of eight or ten 
years. One boy kills himself for sorrow, towards 
his ninth year, because he has lost a favourite bird ; 
another, of about the same age, because he has been 
twelfth in his class. In other cases the causes are 
more serious : wounded filial affection, a precocious 

* Etude sur le suicide chez les enfants, par le Dr. Max 
Durand-Fardel, 1855, i, pp. 61-73. 
f See P. Moreau, op. cit., p. 252. 



250 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

feeling of honour, determine the voluntary death. 
Children have killed themselves because they had 
lost their mother, because they had been called 
thieves. Harsh treatment, severe reprimands, pun- 
ishments, are often the cause that disgusts the child 
with life. In certain circumstances the cause of 
suicide remains mysterious, and it is then, above 
all, that the supreme resolution may be attributed 
to a morbid, insane impulse, rather than to delib- 
erate reflection. Esquirol cites the case of a child 
who, before killing himself, had written these 
strange words, evidently the expression of an un- 
healthy excitement : " I bequeath my soul to Rous- 
seau and my body to the earth.^' Another ends his 
days because he has not enough air to breathe 

easily. 

An interesting observation is that of suicides 

who have succeeded only when grown, after having 
tried several times in childhood. Esquirol men- 
tions a woman who had tried to drown herself at 
nine years, and who threw herself into the river 
again at forty. Gall says : " I know at this mo- 
ment a very well educated young woman who, 
when four or five years old, her parents having 
shut her up as a punishment, conceived the wish to 
destroy herself. She is always expecting death.'-* * 

We cannot repeat too often that in the case of 
suicidal insanity, as in that of hallucination and 
the other forms of insanity, the germ of evil that 
breaks forth at a given moment at the age of ma- 
turity, lurks for a long time unperceived during 

* Gall, Sur les fonctions du cerveau, 1825, vol. iv, p. 338. , 



MORBID TENDENCIES 251 

the years of cliildliood and of youth. There is an 
education of insanity, if I may say so, as there is an 
education of wisdom, and the morbid manifesta- 
tions of troubled minds, with few exceptions, are not 
produced suddenly, any more than the most perfect 
works of well-regulated intelligence. 

IV 

We have shown that the majority of the forms 
of insanity are found in the child, that his sensi- 
bility and his will can be affected as well as his in- 
telligence, his outward perception, and his muscular 
activity. But, the child not being able to put his 
mental faculties immediately into play in the ful- 
ness of their strength, there will be in his case a 
development of insanity, a succession of different 
morbid affections, from convulsions of the muscles 
and hallucination of the senses, to the delirium of 
the intelligence and of the will.* Nay, for the same 
reason, the essential types of insanity which are 
presented at every age will be produced in the child 
only under milder and less extensive forms. They 
will present the same symptoms as in the adult, but 
in miniature. We have already had occasion to 
say elsewhere that normal mental operations dif- 
fered from child to man in quantity rather than in 
quality ; reason is less powerful, but it acts in the 
same way ; the imagination has not the same broad 
range, but its flight is the same. The same thing is 

* Systematic insanity is extremely rare in childhood, because 
the ego, at this age, is not yet sufficiently developed to present a 
durable and radical perversion." (Moreau, p. 292.) 



252 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

true of tlie irregular and disordered action of the 
child's faculties as of their normal exercise ; we 
recognise the disturbances that characterize de- 
rangement in the grown man, but they are abridged, 
and on a small scale. The child's insanity is the 
weakened but the exact image of insanity at all 
ages. 

It is not a question, however, of finding in the 
child's nature all the varieties of insanity, all the 
strange coincidences, all the fantastic combinations 
to which the wanderings of intelligence and the 
irregularity of the sensibility may give place in 
a diseased mind. What we find above all in the 
child, are, if I may say it, the elements of insanity : 
hallucination, simple delirium, unhealthy impulses 
— elements that Nature will use later to form the 
tissue of so many painful and complicated forms of 
madness. Naturally the child escapes alienations 
caused by alcoholism,* those caused by the abuse 
of passions, and many others. Certain poisonous 
plants grow only in appropriate soils. So there are 
forms of insanity allied with certain social states, 
with certain degrees of civilization ; there are also 
forms of insanity contemporaneous with such or 
such ages. 

Notice, moreover, that the specialists of our time 
yield perhaps to a tendency to be regretted when 
they unnecessarily multiply the different kinds of 
insanity, when they indefinitely subdivide their 
subject and found new categories differing from 

* To be sure, he does not escape those communicated some- 
times by the alcoholism of his ancestors, and we have cited several 
examples of this. 



MORBID TENDENCIES 253 

each, other almost imperceptibly. The science of 
mental derangement is still waiting for its Darwin, 
a moderate Darwin, who in the multiplicity of facts 
shall set a few guide-posts, and shall unify varieties 
now wrongly separated. "When this work of reduc- 
tion shall have been done, we are certain that we 
shall recognise more easily than we do to-day the 
existence of the principal forms, the typical forms, 
of insanity. 

While waiting for this time, the most important 
thing to do is to insist on the causes that produce 
the facts, at the same time that we examine the facts 
themselves. Important at every age, the etiolog}^ 
of the insanity of childhood is especially important, 
because in a nature still young, whose education is 
not yet formed, in a brain still tender, whose devel- 
opment is not yet complete, the remedy is perhaps 
easier to find. 

The causes of insanity are infinitely varied, as 
is insanity itself. Is it surprising that a phenome- 
non so complex, extending through, the whole gamut 
of human feelings, changing separately each part of 
the soul or all the parts at once, always a mingling 
of psychological and of moral elements, formed at 
the same time by an organic lesion and a mental 
affection — is it surprising that this complex phenom- 
enon should be the result of a multitude of causes ? 
These causes are sometimes moral, sometimes phys- 
ical. Specialists admit for the majority of cases, 
and this in a considerable proportion, a predom- 
inance of moral causes. For the insanity of child- 
bood, by reason of the nature of a being in whom 
the moral life is just beginning, we should believe 
19 



254 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

that the relation is reversed, that physical causes 
predominate. 

Here are some examples of intellectual dis- 
orders determined by material accidents and phys- 
ical disease: Fran Engelken speaks of a child of 
ten afl9.icted with St. Vitus's dance, and afterward 
with delirium, as a result of the extraction of a 
tooth.* Forbes Winslow cites the case of a boy of 
six who had convulsions and an attack of mania 
during dentition, f We have already related the 
observations of a child that became deranged as the 
result of vaccination. In others insanity follows 
smallpox,! in others typhoid fever.* Guislain ob- 
served a child of seven whose fits of mania were 
provoked by a blow on the head. " The most strik- 
ing example of mental derangement in children 
that it has been my lot to observe,''' wrote Dr. Morel, 
" is that of a little girl of eleven years who after re- 
covering from a disease of the scalp had St. Yitus's 
dance and soon appeared a veritable maniac." || 
Material lesions and the abnormal development of 
the brain are also causes of insanity in the child, as 
at every age. Ideler mentions a little girl of eleven 
afflicted with melancholia whose head was of exag- 
gerated size."^ The brain of children is normally 

* Allgemeine Zeitschrift fiir Psychiatrie, v, p. 373. 

f Ibid., viii, p. 380. " The first dentition," says Esquirol, in 
speaking of the convulsions of children, " predisposes them to in- 
sanity." 

X Foville, Dietionnaire de medecine, 1829. 

* Cited by Esquirol. 

II Morel, Traite des maladies mentales, 101. 
^ Annales de charite, Berlin, 1853. 



MORBID TENDENCIES 255 

soft, and althougli it is not necessary to liken tlie 
child to the old man — which, according to the some- 
what poetic expression of a distinguished philoso- 
pher, * would be " confounding the rose stripped of 
its petals with the bud ready to open" — we cannot 
deny that there is in this fact, as it were, a predis- 
position to insanity ; softening of the brain being, as 
we know, one of the common causes of senile de- 
mentia, f 

There is no difficulty in citing cases in which 
moral causes, especially fear, have operated. Yer- 
ing and Yogel mention little girls that became in- 
sane as the result of an emotion of fear; one of 
them was taken with a fixed idea of killing her 
stepmother, whom, up to this time, she had loved 
dearly.]: Superstitious terror, a precocious exalta- 
tion of religious feelings, fear of hell, demonomania, 
have an influence also. A little girl of nine or ten, 
whose parents had excited her imagination by too 
strong pictures of the future life, one evening saw 
the devil appearing to her ; she uttered a loud cry 
and fell senseless.* Epidemics of religious insanity 
have not escaped childhood; in the tenth or the 
eleventh century, crowds of children abandoned 
their families and their country to make a pilgrim- 

* Renaudin, Etudes medico-psychiologiques, 1854, p. 13. 

f Meningitis, on the other hand — that is to say, the direct irri- 
tation of the cerebral substance — may cause either an acute delir- 
ium, or the suppression of cerebral functions. (Moreau, op. cit., 
p. 129.) 

X Psych. Heilkunde, ii, Leipsic, 1818 ; Rust's Magazine, xii, 
1822. 

* Crichton Browne, On Insanity, vol. xi, p. 15. 



256 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

age to the Holy Land. In 1605^ the children of the 
country of Labour, influenced by the example of 
their parents, experienced hallucination and ec- 
stasy.* During the religious wars of C^vennes, 
seven or eight thousand children assembled and 
prophesied with the greatest exaltation. f 

In many cases the cause of childish insanity is 
neither exclusively physical nor exclusively moral. 
The derangement of the moral faculties follows a 
nervous disease. When we know what a slight 
relation connects the different disturbances of the 
nervous system, we cannot be astonished to find 
that in the child, as in man, chorea, epilepsy, hys- 
teria — in a word, the different nervous disorders — 
appear only with their ordinary train of intellectual 
troubles and delirious symptoms. 

We should commit a very grave error if we at- 
tributed the madness of children only to the acci- 
dents that affect them, to the nervous or other dis- 
eases that assail them, to the faults of education, 
which can very easily warp their intelligence and 
pervert their sensibility. Most often we must go 
farther back than birth — to the period of gestation, 
to the emotions of the mother during pregnancy. 
An observer reports that of ninety-two children 
born during the siege of Landrecies, sixteen died 
at birth, thirty-five languished a few months, ten 

* See Calmeil, De la folie consideree an point de vue patho- 
logique, historique, etc., vol. ii, p. 434. 

f Dr. Moreau (of Tours) tells of a girls' school, in which one 
child of four years having been taken with a fit of epileptiform 
convulsions, all her classmates were seized by convulsions of the 
same sort. 



MORBID TENDENCIES 257 

"were idiots.* We have to go still farther — to the 
habits of the parents, the temperaments of the fam- 
ily and of the race — in order to find the morbid prin- 
ciple that will disorganize the child's moral fac- 
ulties. 

Especially in individuals born of parents ad- 
dicted to drink, is it easy to see the fatal influence 
that the vices of the fathers and the mothers exer- 
cise on the moral health as well as on the physical 
health of descendants. Almost all children born 
under these conditions die at an early age from 
convulsions, or if they survive, they remain hyster- 
ical or epileptic all their lives, f Dr. Hippolyte 
Martin has studied eighty-three families in which 
one or several members showed a nervous super- 
excitation of alcoholic origin. " Of four hundred 
and ten children born in these families, one hun- 
dred and eight — more than a quarter — had convul- 
sions, and at the end of a few years one hundred 
and sixty-nine were dead, while two hundred and 
forty-one still lived ; but eighty-three — that is, more 
than a third of the survivors — were epileptic." I 

If by the mere fact that they have had the 
habit of drunkenness, parents can transmit a de- 

* Compare Moreau (of Tours) : The numerous troubles of de- 
velopment, and the exceptional mortality observed in children 
born at Paris during the last months of 1871, led to their designa- 
tion in the working population as Children of the Siege (op. cit., 
p. 37). 

f Combe, On the Management of Infancy, p. 76. 

X See Annales medico-psychologique, 1879, i, p. 48. Article by 
Dr. Hippolyte Martin, on The Alcoholism of Parents considered as 
a Cause of Epilepsy in their Descendants. 



258 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

generate life to their cMldren, a nervous tempera- 
ment whose weakness and excitability are a pre- 
disposition, and, as it were, an appeal to convul- 
sions, to epilepsy, to all mental diseases, how much 
more truly can it be said that parents already in- 
sane, whose derangement is declared, should inevi- 
tably leave as a heritage to their descendants a sort 
of instinctive mania and innate insanity. " I have 
constantly observed,"' says Dr. Morel, "that the 
children of a deranged father or mother presented 
from the first anomalous nervous functions, which 
were the most certain signs of an ulterior degen- 
eracy, when nothing was done to combat such an 
appalling danger.'" * 

Heredity is then the most frequent, although 
the most obscure, cause of insanity in children. It 
is not in the bad treatment of a crabbed stepmother, 
in the little deceptions of the childish life, in the 
brutality of schoolmasters, that we must seek most 
often for the cause of the evil ; the derangement of 
the faculties has a more distant origin. By a sort 
of fatal selection, which has nothing in common 
with what is represented to us as the cause of the 
progress of the world, the evil is transmitted and 
aggravated from one generation to another. A 
simple nervous crisis in a grandfather may become 
a disposition to melancholia or to mania in the son, 
a state of absolute idiocy and imbecility in the 
grandson. Morbid phenomena, still more than nor- 
mal states of the human consciousness, show the 
force of this law of heredity, according to which 



* See Annales medico-psychologique, 1857, p. 466. 



MORBID TENDENCIES 259 

the bad is transmitted much, more easily than the 
good, and which becomes more and more the scien- 
tific formula of a truth that religions had a presenti- 
ment of and have expressed by the dogma of original 
sin. Moreover, we must not misunderstand the 
characteristics of this law. On the one side, we 
may successfully struggle against the disposition 
that it transmits; the evil is not altogether irreme- 
diable. On the other hand, it is itself only the 
result of the free use that parents have made of 
their will. There has been, in the life of ancestors, 
in the family past, a series of unrestrained acts of 
which posterity will carry the curse. There has been 
some time — a day, an hour — in which the fate of 
the entire family has been cast, so that a veritable 
moral joint responsibility binds parents to children, 
and heredity, in spite of its false air of fatality, 
still has liberty as its cause and its principle. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE SENSE OF SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 

I. Examination of Preyer's theory of the development of the 
• sense of selfhood. — The child's observation of his own body, 
and the recognition of his image in a mirror. — The part of 
language in forming the ego. — Opinions of Romanes and Luys. 
— The sense of selfhood certainly precedes the employment of 
the words / and me. — Language makes the ego more distinct, 
but does not form it. — Development of the idea of the ego. — 
States of consciousness. — Thanks to repetition of states of con- 
sciousness, memory binds them together. — The unity and the 
continuity of the ego results from the coordination, from the 
integration of remembrances. — The part of voluntary activity 
in the development of the personality. — How education concurs 
in forming the child's personality and the consciousness of 
this personality. IL The general law of gradual development. 
— There are, however, moments of sudden transition. — Con- 
sciousness does not entirely reveal to us the depth of our being. 
— The physiology of the child. — Metaphysics of the child's 
soul. — The development of the child's faculties is more or less 
rapid. — Principal causes of these differences. — Does sex affect 
the question"? — The influence of education. — The little child 
cannot be identified with the animal. — The child's faculties 
differ from those of man quantitatively rather than qualita- 
tively. — Conclusion. 

I 

Preyer's theory of tlie origins and the develop- 
ment of the sense of selfhood is among the most 
260 



THE SENSE OF SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 261 

interesting, and merits an examination; it is in- 
complete, and therefore erroneous ; but if it does 
not take all the facts into account, those on which 
it rests are exact and cleverly observed.* 

Preyer begins by trying to determine how the 
child acquires the knowledge of his own body, and 
by what signs we can see that he has acquired it. 
It is by painful impressions, above all, that the dis- 
tinction between subject and object will be revealed 
to him, and that he will come to consider as belong- 
ing to him the different parts of his being that he 
sees and touches, and in which he feels at the same 
time sensations of pain. But in his observations 
Preyer insists, above all, on the way in which the 
child looks at his own image in a mirror ; according 
to him, it would be enough for the child to distin- 
guish his reflected image in the glass for us to say 
that he has passed "out of a condition in which 
objective and subjective changes are not distin- 
guished from each other, owing to the gradual 
growth of the consciousness of self." 

There seems to be some confusion in the Ger- 
man physiologist's thought. The observation of 
the image is doubtless the proof that the child has 
already acquired, to a certain extent, the conscious- 
ness of his body, since he recognises it in the image 
produced by the polished surface of the mirror. 
This observation in itself, however, contributes 
nothing to the development of the ego; it presup- 
poses it. It may serve as external testimony, to 
find that progress has been gained in the child's 

* Development of the Intellect, p. 196 et seq. 



262 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

consciousness, but it is of no use in this progress. 
The animal also looks at himself in the mirror, but 
monkeys and cats, when placed before a mirror, 
take their images for other monkeys, other cats; 
we see them go behind the mirror, even entirely 
around it, as if to look for them. This proves 
simply that they are capable neither of enough 
attention for a representation, a mental image, of 
their own body to be formed, nor of enough intelli- 
gence and reflection to have the idea of their per- 
sonal individuality. In the beginning the child is 
at the same point. "In the fifty-seventh week," 
says Preyer, " I held a small hand-mirror close 
to the face of the child. He looked at his image, 
and then passed his hand behind the glass, and 
moved the hand hither and thither, as if search- 
ing." Several weeks afterward, on the contrary. 
Axel smiled at his image, or made faces at it. 
It is evident that he believed that he had to 
do with a twin, another self, and the animal 
never goes so far as this. If the child comes to 
it, it is simply that for other causes, and by reason 
of the particular conditions of his consciousness, 
he is soon in possession of at least a vague and con- 
fused sense of his personal existence. Preyer, in a 
way, confuses effect with cause. It is evidently 
arguing in a circle to say that the child who recog- 
nises his own image, or who takes account of his 
own body, draws from these two facts the idea of 
his personality. On the contrary, he brings this 
idea with him ; it renders these two facts possible, 
and in order to say " My body," " My image," the 
child must previously have had more or less the 



THE SENSE OF SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 263 

consciousness of self. We must seek elsewhere, 
then, for the real origins of the personality. 

Preyer shows clearer perception in refusing to 
consider language the source of the sense of self- 
hood. In this he differs from a number of ob- 
servers, who do not hesitate to say that the child - 
acquires this feeling in learning to talk, and espe- 
cially on the day when he speaks of himself no 
longer in the third person, but using the words / 
and me; when, for instance, he no longer says 
" George is good," " Marcel is hungry,'^ but " I am 
good," " I am hungry." 

Romanes does not hesitate to make the forma- 
tion of the sense of selfhood a result of language. 
" The change in the child^s phraseology, when he 
ceases speaking of himself as object to speak as 
subject, is seldom produced before the third year. 
When this change has been effected, we have defi- 
nite proofs of a veritable, although still rudimentary, 
consciousness. It is even probable that this change 
would not take place so soon if it were not favoured 
by the " social medium," for, as Sully says, the re- 
lation of the self and the not-self, including the 
relation between the " I " and the " you," is con- 
stantly brought to the child^s attention by the lan- 
guage of others.* 

It is in Luys, above all, that we find the doctrine 
of the new nominalism clearly formulated, accord- 
ing to which the pronoun '^ I " would have a mag- 
ical power of creating selfhood. " Children," says 
Luys, " towards the second or the third year, talk 

* Sully, op. cit, p. 377. 



264: LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

as they feel. They are accustomed to view them- 
selves as a body having external form, and occupy- 
ing a determinate place in space. Even their name 
is not yet assimilated and completely incarnated in 
them as the concrete expression of their whole 
being. They still preserve a certain shade of ob- 
jectivity ; in the primitive forms of their language, 
they speak of themselves in the third person, as 
though of some one strange to them, and show 
their emotions or their desires according to this 
simple formula : Paul wants such a thing, Paul has 
a headache. It is only little by little and in some 
measure by the effect of incessant efforts, of a con- 
tinued trituration, that he comes to learn that the 
ensemble of his personality, having reached a state 
of unity, may manifest itself in a somewhat abstract 
form other than that of a proper name, and that its 
equivalent formula is represented by the words I, 
me. By a new effort of abstraction, the child ac- 
cepts unconsciously this conventional notion that is 
furnished him ready made, and as it is easy, expe- 
ditious, usual, he appropriates it, uses it, and grad- 
ually brings it into his ordinary conversation."^ * 

Luys's theory, you will see, tends to present to 
us the idea of the ego as suggested, as whispered to 
the child by the words I or me, which he has finally 
been taught to pronounce and to comprehend. The 
child, so to speak, will put on his personality as he 
puts on his clothes. 

It is easy to say in answer to these new nomi- 
nalists, as to all nominalists, that the word can have 

* Luys, Le Cerveau et ses fonctions, p. 190. 



' THE SENSE OF SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 265 

meaning only if it corresponds to an idea already 
existing ; tliat it follows the idea, that it defines it, 
if you will, but that it does not create it. This is 
the point that Preyer saw clearly when he charac- 
terized as erroneous the general opinion " that the 
' I ' feeling would begin to be formed when the em- 
ployment of I or me began. There can be no doubt 
but that the child knows himself vaguely for a 
long time before he can conjugate verbs in the first 
person." * When he designates himself by his own 
name, it is not the least in the world because he 
takes himself for a third person ; it is simply the 
inexperience of language, passive imitation of ex- 
pressions used by his parents, when they speak of 
him, when they say, " Paul is naughty,"" or ^' Paul 
will hurt himself." Preyer gives us interesting ob- 
servations on this subject. " Many headstrong chil- 
dren have a strongly marked I feeling, without call- 
ing themselves by anything but their names, because 
their relatives in speaking with them do not call 
themselves ' I," but Papa, Mamma, Uncle, Grandma, 
and so on, so that the opportunity early to hear and 
to appreciate the words J and mine is rare. Others 
hear these words often, to be sure, especially from 
children somewhat older, and use them, yet do not 
understand them, as is shown by the fact that they 
add to them their own names." Preyer then is right 

* Perez is of the same opinion : " Althougii the contrary is 
generally held to be true, I cannot admit that when children speak 
of themselves in the third person, it is because the notion of their 
personality and the term that expresses it are not yet completely 
separa.ted from external objectivity." (Les trois premieres annees 
de I'enfant, p. 324.) 



266 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

in concluding that the I feeling precedes the ac- 
quisition of appropriate language. " By means of 
speech only, the conceptual distinction of the I, the 
self, the mine, is made exact ; merely the develop- 
ment, not the origin, of the I is favoured." 

So far the results of our analysis have been 
negative, and we have to seek elsewhere than in the 
facts already referred to for the cause of the per- 
sonal consciousness. What does Preyer suggest ? 
Truth to tell, in his definite conclusion, nothing hut 
the doctrine of the sensualists, of those who think 
that the self is only a collection of sensations. Ac- 
cording to him, there are in the beginning several 
distinct consciousnesses, each giving birth to an 
ego. " The ego of the brain is other than the ego 
of the spinal marrow ; the one speaks, hears, sees, 
tastes, smells, and feels ; the other merely feels, and 
at the first the two egos are absolutely isolated 
from each other." Two egos — this is not enough to 
say ; in reality there would be as many as there are 
sources of perception. "At the beginning, when 
the centres of sight, hearing, smell, and taste in 
the brain are imperfectly developed, each of these 
perceives for itself, the perceptions in the different 
sensitive areas having as yet no connection at all 
with one another, just as the spinal marrow at first 
does not communicate, or only very imperfectly 
communicates, with the brain." * How the union, 

* Ribot also believes that " the individuality is the associa- 
tion and the condensation of elementary consciousnesses, at first 
automatic and scattered." (Les Maladies de la personnalite, p. 
151.) " The consciousness," he goes on to say, " is a sum of states." 



THE SENSE OF SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 267 

tlie grouping of these different egos into one ego, 
could be accomplished, Preyer would really not be 
able to explain. Indeed, if each organ of percep- 
tion by its exercise furnished the idea of a distinct 
ego (which, moreover, is not so, the idea of the ego 
presupposing conditions more complicated than a 
simple series of perceptions of the same sort), it 
seems to us that it would be impossible to under- 
stand how these different personal consciousnesses 
could be joined and fused, to be finally a conscious- 
ness one and indivisible, which is the foundation of 
the real idea of the ego. The division into two 
egos, the double personality, as manifested some- 
times in cases of morbid psychology, is a rare ex- 
ceptional thing, which is explained only by a per- 
turbation of the organism. But how can we admit 
that each day, in the regular conditions of exist- 
ence, the converse movement, which would consist 
in unifying distinct egos, six or seven at least, is 
renewed for each child ? In resolving the diffi- 
culty, the importance of which he does not seem to 
suspect, Preyer is content to plead that the sense- 
perceptions soon become simultaneous, that the 
child smells and touches, sees and hears, sees and 
touches, and so on, at the same time. Prom this 
would result a bond, a relation between the differ- 
ent centres of perception, what Preyer calls " bonds 
of intercentral association." But if Preyer thus ap- 
proaches unity, he nevertheless does not attain it as 
yet. In order that the building up of the ego 
should be possible, according to these principles, it 
would be necessary that the sentient individual 
should develop all his senses at one and the same 



268 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

moment, tliat all the functions that the conscions- 
ness relates to the ego should be called into play 
in a sort of unified and common vibration. But 
this is not so ; our impressions are successive ; they 
come one after the other in time. They can be pro- 
duced at the most in twos, and I do not know even 
that there has ever been any real simultaneity. In 
any case, at no moment is there this concentration, 
this condensation, in a unique sensorium, of all the 
different sensations and perceptions of which a 
human being is capable. 

This is so true that, after all, Preyer ends by 
presenting the feeling of selfhood as being only an 
abstraction, and consequently as not corresponding 
to a reality. " This abstract ' I ' concept that be- 
longs only to the adult thinking human being, 
comes into existence in exactly the same way that 
other concepts do — viz., by means of the individual 
ideas from which it results, as e. g., the forest ex- 
ists only when the trees exist.^' — The ego would 
be then purely abstract, not even a collection of 
particular states. " The I cannot exist as a unit,'' 
says Preyer, '' but still less is it an aggregate ; " * 
and the consequence would be that the child can- 
not reach the higher idea of the ego. The second- 
ary egos, corresponding to isolated sense-domains, 
are not yet blended in the young child ; there is no 
unity, because he still lacks the organic bonds — 

* It would seem, however, from the comparison that Preyer 
uses and that we have just cited — "the forest exists only when the 
trees exist " — that the ego corresponds to the forest, the sum of all 
the elements that compose it. We must agree that there is some 
obscurity in Preyer's language. 



THE SENSE OF SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 269 

translated into psychological language, lie still 
lacks the faculty of abstraction. 

We are still convinced, on the contrary, that 
the child is very early capable of knowing himself, 
of distinguishing himself as a person, and that be- 
cause he really is a person. The idea of the ego 
appears only when the ego is formed ; but the ego 
is formed in the degree possible to the intellectual 
weakness of the child when the successive states of 
consciousness have been connected, associated, by 
memory, and when once formed it is developed and 
strengthened when the voluntary activity has come 
to animate the consciousness. 

The point of departure in the evolution of the 
idea of the self is evidently the conscious fact. 
But a multitude of conscious facts unfold long be- 
fore the ego appears.* Consciousness, indeed, or, to 

* " It is not consciousness that we deny the new-born child, it 
is the consciousness of self. It is evident that he has sensations, 
but he does not localize them. Doubtless the sensations proceed- 
ing from different points of the body must each have a special 
character ; but to learn to distinguish them and to attribute them 
to one point rather than to another, long experience is necessary ; 
the frequent repetition of these sensations must render possible 
their subjective reproduction associated with the image of the 
part of the body from which they proceed. Only little by little, 
then, can the child form a more or less complete topography of 
his own body. But, as all parts of our body are put into com- 
munication with the nervous centres, as the latter reproduce sub- 
jectively the image of several of these parts or of their totality 
when a single one is excited ; as, finally, this reproduction is neces- 
sarily the most frequent of all, the ego forms the habit of consid- 
ering itself as an individual, as a whole, one and indivisible. But 
for the child to have also the feeling of the continuity of the ego, 
it is necessary for memory to arrive at a high degree of develop- 
20 



270 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

speak more exactly, the fact of being conscious of a 
phenomenon of one sort or another, does not neces- 
sarily connect this phenomenon with the notion of 
the ego, and does not necessarily imply ipso facto 
the distinction between subject and object. We 
might hold that these states of consciousness, these 
sensations, and these perceptions, in spite of the di- 
versity of the objects that they present to the child, 
have all a common character — that of being felt, of 
being conscious, and that consequently, from the 
comparison of these phenomena, all similar in one 
point, there would be slowly evolved the idea of 
their resemblance, which would be precisely the idea 
of the ego. But this operation would be possible 
only if the states of consciousness appeared in 
turns, so to speak, before a soul all formed, capable 
of grasping and of judging of relations. But this 
hypothesis is untenable. 

The successive states of consciousness have an- 
other characteristic, that of recognising themselves 
when they reappear. Memory binds together the 
scattered consciousnesses, separated by each succes- 
sive act of the sensibility, and of perception. It is 
almost a truism to add that memory can play this 
part only when the same phenomena of conscious- 
ness are repeated. " The consciousness of the self," 
says Fouill^e, " demands that the same sensation or 
representation should he repeated ; it presupposes a 
sort of integration of similar elements, an organiza- 
tion of resemblances amid differences.'' * It is al- 

ment, which cannot come until much later." (Herzen, Revue 
phi] OS., 1878, ii, p. 380). 

* Fouillee, L'l&volutionisme des idees-forces, 1890, p. 46. 



THE SENSE OP SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 271 

lowable to conjecture as to what would become of 
the ego, and whether the feeling of the self would 
ever succeed in forming, if the impressions made 
on the consciousness were changed unceasingly, so 
that the same ones should never appear twice. 

Because we have a sound sleep without dreams, 
we all experience every day an interruption, a cut, 
so to speak, in the continuity of our consciousness.* 
But is it not true that on awakening we have, for 
several instants at least, only a confused feeling of 
existence, that we no longer clearly distinguish our 
ego ? It takes us several minutes to get a footing 
again, in a way, in the course of conscious life, to 
seize upon our personal existence again, and to join 
to our last conscious state of the night before the 
first conscious states of our awakening. If, for in- 
stance, we have slept in a hotel for the first time, 
where no sensation is familiar to us, where new ob- 
jects present themselves, where we do not find the 
familiar perceptions of the room that we ordinarily 
inhabit, neither the same curtains, nor the same 
windows, nor the same upholstery, where, in a 
word, memory recalls nothing to us, we have still 
more trouble in returning to the possession of our 
ego.t 

The child passes through a state analogous to 

* This is still more true of one coming out of a faint, a swoon. 

f This is not the only case in which light could be thrown on 
the psychology of the child by appealing to what happens in our 
consciousness at the moment of awakening. For instance, I have 
had the impression several times on awakening that objects com- 
paratively far from my eyes were very near them ; when first 
opened, the eyes cannot appreciate relations in space. 



272 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

that which, we have just described, and what in the 
adult passing from sleep to a waking state lasts 
only a few instants, is prolonged in the child for 
several months. Just as there is a gradual develop- 
ment of consciousness, steps to gain in passing 
from the unconscious to the conscious, so also there 
is a slow evolution in passing from a confused feel- 
ing of existence to a clear idea of self. Memory- 
plays the principal part in this elaboration. The 
ego is, so to speak, a woof of remembrances, or an 
ensemble of remembrances, fitted one into the other, 
according to Taine^s expression. Unity, the con- 
tinuity of the conscious life, is rendered possible 
only by the co-ordination of remembrances ; and in 
the abnormal phenomena of the double conscious- 
ness, the dividing of the personality has this char- 
acteristic, that none of the remembrances of one of 
the two lives is represented in the other. 

Let us hasten to add that the child does not find 
the principle of the notion of the ego only in the 
association of his remembrances. It is from his 
voluntary activity,* from his power of attention, 
from his little daily efforts, also, that he draws the 
feeling of his nascent personality. On this point 
Preyer himself furnishes us with arms to combat 
the theory that he upholds, which tends to make an 
abstraction of the ego. Is it Preyer or is it Maine 
de Biran who writes the page that we are going to 
cite, or at least its conclusion ? " Another impor- 

* According to Wundt, the most important condition of the 
genesis of consciousness is furnished by the muscular sense, in the 
acts of voluntary motion. (Vorlesungen iiber die Menschen und 
Thierseele, chap, xviii.) 



THE SENSE OF SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 273 

tant factor is the perception of a change produced 
by one^s own activity in all sorts of familiar objects 
that can be taken hold of ; and the most remark- 
able day, from a psychological point of view, in 
any case an extremely significant day in the life of 
the infant, is the one on which he first experiences 
the connection of a movement executed by himself 
with a sense-impression following upon it. E. g., 
in the fifth month the child discovers the fact that 
he himself, in tearing paper into smaller and 
smaller pieces, has again and again the new sound- 
sensation. At present there is not indeed, as yet, 
any clear insight into the nexus of cause ; but the 
child has now had the experience that he can him- 
self be the cause of a combined perception of sight 
and sound, to the extent that when he tears paper 
there appears, on the one hand, the lessening in 
size ; on the other hand, the noise. The patience 
with which this occupation is continued with pleas- 
ure is explained by the gratification at being the 
cause, at the perception that so striking a trans- 
formation as that of the newspaper into fragments 
has been effected by means of his own activity.^'* 
Preyer continues by citing a great many other ex- 
amples in which the child shows himself to be ab- 
sorbed by occupations apparently without interest, 
like throwing stones into the water, carrying foot- 
stools from one place to another, arranging stones 
or bonbons in a row. " The satisfaction that these 
occupations afford must be very great, and it prob- 
ably has its basis in the feeling of his own power 

* The Senses and the Will, p. 191. 



274 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

generated by the movements originated by the 
child himself (changes of place, of position, of 
form) and in the proud feeling of being a can.se. . . . 
This is not mere playing, although it is so called ; 
it is experimenting. The child that at first merely 
played like a cat, being amused with colour, form, 
and movement, has become a causative being. 
Herewith the development of the * I ' feeling enters 
upon a new phase, but it is not yet perfected.'" 

This observation, which Preyer mentions in 
passing and which is only an incidental point in his 
theory, might well be the solution of the whole 
question. The individual becomes a person only 
when to the feeling of his unity, his continuity, he 
adds the consciousness of being a causative force.* 
The day when the child, animated by a new im- 
pulse of boldness, escapes from his mother's em- 
brace to walk and run all alone, it is not only his 
little external individuality that is asserted in this 
act of locomotion and of independent life ; it is 
assuredly his moral personality also that acts and 
feels itself acting in the effort accomplished. The 
more the child dares, the more he undertakes, at 
the same time the more will his being and his con- 
sciousness of it grow. Whatever may be thought 
of its first origin, whether it is the higher unfolding 
of an organism or the direct manifestation of an 
immaterial cause, the consciousness responds in its 

* Compare Tiedemann. " At nineteen months the individual- 
ity of my son, more and more developed, showed itself more evi- 
dently by the pleasure that he felt in doing anything difficult : 
crowding through a narrow place, taking dangerous positions, 
carrying heavy things, etc." 



THE SENSE OF SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 275 

strength and its clearness to tlie intensity of tlie 
action that it expresses. 

This is the way in which education can concur 
in the development of the child's personality, by 
respecting his liberty, by calling forth his initia- 
tive. What is deepest within each one of us, what 
by definition ought to escape the action of outward 
influences and have its principle only in the abso- 
lutely spontaneous forces of nature, is a new proof 
to us that the social medium, the family medium, 
at least, never loses its rights. The child brought 
up under constraint, who is only the passive instru- 
ment of his parents' will, in his docile and resigned 
inertia will develop a personality only with diffi- 
culty, if at all. On the contrary, he that is given 
up to his own direction as far as the rules of law 
and order permit, will in a relatively short time 
acquire the feeling of his personality ; he will know 
the pleasure of the little triumphs gained by his ef- 
forts, also the pains of disappointment ; and a pre- 
cocious excitation of his personal feelings will en- 
gender the qualities that are the natural effect, 
courage and • emulation, as well as the faults that 
follow, pride, ambition, obstinacy. Moreover, it is 
not necessary to think that m.ere negative education 
— I mean that which is content to let things take 
their course— would be favourable to the growth of 
the personality. Parents who by both word and 
act show that they sympathize with the least acts 
and gestures of their children, who praise them 
when they do well, who blame them when they do 
ill, are also educators of the personality. " It is 
when the child's attention is driven inward in an 



2Y6 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

act of reflection on Ms own actions as springing 
from good or bad motives, that he wakes up to a 
fuller consciousness of himself." * 



II 

The development of the idea of the ego has fur- 
nished us a final example of this slow gradual ad- 
vance of which we have given proofs on every page 
of this work. The facts of mental order, whatever 
they may be, before acquiring definite form, have 
been for a long time attempted, sketched in the pre- 
vious life of the individual. Nothing is formed all 
of a sudden, by a miracle of nature. The general 
law of which science finds the action in all parts of 
its domain, in the development of the plant as in 
the organization of the nervous system in the ani- 
mal, finds nowhere a more striking verification than 
in the study of the psychical life of the child. 
From the unconscious to the conscious, from an 
automatic state to a voluntary state, from the dif- 
fuse scattered impressions to the concentration of 
all the states of consciousness around a unified, 
identical ego, there is a multitude of insensible 
transitions and of little successive advances. 

In this slow evolution of the consciousness which 
is lighted up gradually there are, however, moments 
of sudden crisis, of rapid and, so to speak, instanta- 
neous progression. "There is some reason to 
think,"" says Romanes, " that when the growth of 
consciousness has attained a certain point, it makes, 

* M. Sully, op. cif., p. 377. 



THE SENSE OF SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 277 

SO to speak, a sudden leap of progress, wliicli may 
be taken to bear the same relation to the develop- 
ment of the mind as the act of birth does to that of 
the body." * 

The evolution, slowly prepared for and followed 
out, bursts forth all of a sudden. In an hour, in a 
minute sometimes, there come quick advances in 
the child's soul that transform it and make up for 
the apparent slowness and inertia of the preceding 
periods ; just as we see in Nature sudden bursts of 
vegetation which in an afternoon of clear spring 
sunshine make the buds on the hitherto bare and 
dry branches of the trees spring forth on every 
side. The latent work of the mental life explodes 
in a sudden flash, which shows us the mysterious 
under side of the child^'s thought and sensibility. A 
word, a reflection of unexpected penetration, sur- 
prises us and announces to us that the child, with- 
out our suspecting it, without any outward sign 
having betrayed the latent and mysterious work 
that has been accomplished, has taken several steps 
forward, and that he has conquered more territory 
than the apparent manifestations of his activity up 
to this time would lead us to suppose-. 

Even in these unforeseen appearances of a con- 
sciousness superior to what the immediately pre- 
ceding conscious states would have led us to ex- 
pect, it is not proved by any means that the law of 
gradation has lost its rights. Consciousness doubt- 
less seems to be lighted up suddenly ; but who can 
say that in these awakenings, in these sudden hatch- 

%* Romanes, Mental Evolution in Man, p. 208. 



278 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

ings, there is not the effect, the result of a series 
of inner transformations that have passed nnper- 
ceived, because by their nature they escape the ob- 
servation of the witnesses of the child's life ? The 
child does not tell us all that he feels, all that he 
thinks. Several links in the chain of his conscious 
states may escape our investigations, and still exist 
none the less. On the other hand, we must empha- 
size the fact that the consciousness, although it re- 
veals the psychic fact and is, as it were, its phenom- 
enal appearance, does not permit us completely to 
attain this fact. It does not penetrate to the depth 
of our being. The psychology of the child such as 
we have outlined is necessarily incomplete, and 
could not pretend to clear up all the mysteries, to 
resolve all the difficulties of so complex a subject. 
There is first the question of the constant relations 
existing between the work of the organization of 
the brain, of the nervous system in general, and the 
evolution of the mental functions. There is, be- 
sides, the question of the essential nature of the 
force, whatever it may be, that presides over the 
development of these two series of phenomena and 
associates them in the unity of life. In a word, the 
history of the intellectual and moral development 
of the child will not be definitely and truly satisfy- 
ing until the day when it is supported either by a 
physiology of the child, which is still far from per- 
fection, or by a system of metaphysics of the child's 
soul, which perhaps will always be impossible. 

Moreover, neither this physiology nor this meta- 
physics could in their conclusions prevail against 
the results of our study ; on the one hand, tne bond. 



THE SENSE OF SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 279 

tlie autonomous co-ordination, so to speak, of con- 
scious states, which, whatever may be their roots in 
the nervous system, are engendered one by the 
other, becoming forces that determine other con- 
scious states, and form consequently a world apart, 
an ensemble of facts sui generis, ending in the 
unity of the personality ; on the other hand, the 
progressive character of the unknown principle of 
mental life, which is not from the first day all that 
it can and ought to be, but which becomes it little 
by little — for it would be impossible to compre- 
hend the fact that a soul, a substance, put all at 
once into possession of all its faculties, would exert 
them only little by little. 

The doctrine of evolution, an hypothesis not yet 
proved so far as it concerns the species and their 
transformations in the history of life and of thought 
on the globe, is, on the contrary, a certitude abso- 
lutely verified by facts, so far as it concerns the 
development of the organs, of the functions, and of 
the faculties in the history of each individual. 

This evolution, moreover, can be accelerated or 
retarded. A little savage will not develop as 
quickly as a child belonging to races that have 
been civilized for a long time. The heredity of the 
race either weighs on the new-born child or buoys 
him up in his course. In the same race, in the 
same people, the evolution will be more or less 
rapid according as the child belongs to such or 
such family ; by the side of the heredity of race, 
there is the heredity of family ; fathers and mothers 
live again in their sons and in their daughters. In 
the same family, from one brother to another we 



280 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

see very appreciable differences; the cliildreii, al- 
though, born of the same parents, are not born 
under the same conditions; there are the older 
ones and the younger ones ; there are consequently 
many different predispositions ; heredity could not 
be the same for all. Finally, if it is true that there 
is a greater similarity of development between 
twins than between two brothers of different ages, 
particular traits of development belonging, never- 
theless, to each one of them remind us that heredity 
is not everything; that there is, so to speak, an 
inborn individuality, a mysterious personal pre- 
formation. 

These are in sum the natural causes of the dif- 
ferences that are manifested in the development of 
individuals, the causes that explain in part why 
Axel, Preyer's son, is always behind, why Tiede- 
mann's son is always in advance ; why, finally, in a 
multitude of beings called one after the other into 
life, there are not two whose development is en- 
tirely the same. 

Is it necessary in the history of the child^s soul 
to take sex into account ? Certainly little girls are 
not in every point like little boys in their way of 
acting, in their sensibility, in their intelligence.* 
People tell us that they talk earlier; that they 
show very early the traits that will characterize 
them as women — their subtlety, their finesse, a little 
less power of abstraction and generalization in 
reasoning, a little more vivacity and nobility in 



* " Among deaf-mutes," says Ladreyt de la Charriere, " the 
little girls are more calm than the little boys." 



THE SENSE OF SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 281 

their feelings, perhaps a little less activity in their 
movements. And yet, we think that up to the age 
of three or four years, where we leave the child, 
there is no appreciable difference. The observer 
does not distinguish a boy from a girl at first sight ; 
their faces are alike ; their souls also, apart from 
imperceptible shades, are almost all alike. Their 
toys are the same, a doll amusing a boy as much as 
a girl. It is only towards the age of four or five 
years that there could be question of a distinct 
^psychology for each sex. " Little girls," said Ca- 
banis, "share the petulance of little boys, little 
boys share the mobility of little girls. The appe- 
tites, the ideas, the passions of these beings just be- 
ginning the life of the soul, these still uncertain 
beings that most languages confound under the 
common name of children, show the greatest anal- 
ogy in the two sexes. To be sure," Cabanis adds, 
*'an attentive observer can already see between 
them notable differences ; the distinctive traits of 
nature begin to show themselves in the general 
forms of organization, in moral habits, or in the 
naive accents of affection." But these differences, 
if they exist at all at a year or at two years, must 
be very slight, for Cabanis makes no note of them. 
Whatever the sex, whatever the family and the 
race, the development, here slower, there more 
rapid, imposes the same laws on all children. 
What a gratifying sight is this regular order, 
which, in the infinite variety of faces and of charac- 
ters, bends all the little beings coming into this 
world to the same yoke, forcing them to develop 
uniformly, in the same direction, according to a 



282 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

constant rule of succession, to clear up in tlie same 
way the chaos of their nascent emotions and 
thoughts ! 

What progress of humanity would not be possi- 
ble if to this natural order of development corre- 
sponded an appropriate education, sure enough of 
its principles to second the work of the hereditary 
or innate instincts, vigilant enough to begin this 
work at the cradle, to organize a favourable medium 
around the child, to do away in what he sees, in 
what he hears, with all that might thwart or turn 
aside the natural tendencies of the sensibility and 
the intelligence; in fine, an education sufficiently 
enlightened to furnish the child's weakness with 
all the help, all the support and the excitation that 
it needs ! 

If one truth has been brought out by all our ob- 
servations, it is that the child can do nothing with- 
out the aid of education. Contrary to Kibot, who 
says that education amounts to little in comparison 
with innate personality and heredity, we are con- 
vinced that the action of parents, that the action 
of society, is very important, and that this explains, 
even more than does the action of Nature, the dif- 
ference between intelligences and characters. For 
certain absolute partisans of Darwinism there would 
be nothing but reminiscence in the nature of the 
child. The new-born child would have nothing to 
discover, nothing to invent ; he would have but to 
remember. Plato would have found long ago the 
true formula of existence, although he understood 
it differently. The child would have no more 
trouble in becoming a man, in putting into play 



THE SENSE OF SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 283 

the faculties which would be only sleeping possi- 
bilities of actions already accomplished by a series 
of generations, than a mere prattler would have in 
repeating mechanically a story that he had been 
told a thousand times. 

We forget too often that, in spite of the heredi- 
tary transmission of instincts and of faculties, all 
has to be done over, to be begun anew, for each in- 
dividual. The mental life is not composed of a 
series of easy reminiscences ; it is a succession of 
laborious acquisitions and of personal conquests. 
Heredity transmits to us not a soul all made, but 
merely germs, which develop only with the help of 
time, of work, and of reflection. The evolution of 
the species ought not to prevent our seeing the de- 
velopment of the individual, repeated unceasingly. 

The child is at once the work of nature and the 
work of education, this word education comprising 
all that his personal experience permits him to ac- 
quire. It is impossible to say exactly in what pro- 
portion there is mingled what he gives and what is 
given him.* There is no chemical analysis so dif- 

* Perez raises the same question in these words : " I have 
often asked myself this question, not without anxiety, when I 
found myself face to face with a little child, a mysterious sphinx 
that unconsciously watched me observing him, while his great 
calm, wondering eyes disconcerted my laborious inductions. I 
remember that such or such an action, for a long time concealed in 
the receptacle of the rudimentary faculties, suddenly leaped into 
the light, awakened by the chance presentation of certain favour- 
able circumstances, and I asked myself whether I ought not to 
restore to instinct and to heredity what ray observations gave 
me the right to take from them, in order to give it to conscious- 
ness and to individual experience." 



284: LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

ficult as the mental analysis that would consist in 
distinguishing the elements belonging to spontane- 
ity and those resulting from the action of educa- 
tion. There is here an obscure collaboration, in 
which only the participation of two concurrent 
forces is certain; just as in a well-constructed 
drama, composed by two poets that do not explain 
their method, it is difficult to tell which parts belong 
to each. 

However convinced we may be of the power of 
education, nevertheless we do not go so far as to 
believe that education makes the child what he is ; 
that is say, a little more than an animal, although 
much less than a man. As soon as he can speak^ 
as soon as he can say I, to say nothing of the 
characteristic traits of his sensibility, of his mem- 
ory, of his imagination, of his reasoning, to say 
nothing, above all, of his weakness and also his 
greatness, the obligation to acquire all that the ani- 
mal knows by instinct — the child has put an abyss 
between the animal and himself. 

In the comparisons that the philosophers of 
Darwin's school draw between animals and man, it 
is easy to distinguish a double tendency of which 
we conjecture the intention and the end : on the 
one hand, the human faculties are considered in 
their lowest signification, the notions that represent 
them are stripped of their essential content ; on the 
other hand, the slightest facts in the life of animals 
are transfigured, exalted, some of their actions 
being interpreted with complacent admiration. 
Thanks to this contrary movement that tends to 
lower man while it raises the beast, the distance be- 



THE SENSE OF SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 285 

tween these two forms of existence is singularly 
diminished ; the two banks draw near, and the pas- 
sage from one to the other is easy. However, since 
they mean well, the evolutionists do not hesitate to 
recognise the fact that the difference between the 
child and the animal is already sensible. " We 
could not confound, from the point of view of in- 
telligence, the mind of the little child and that of 
the grown dog.^' Thus speaks Darwin, more just 
in this than his opponent Agassiz, who, I do not 
know why, has written somewhere, " I do not see 
any essential difference between the intelligence of 
a child two years old and that of a young chim- 
panzee.'^ 

If Agassiz spoke truthfully, ISTature having al- 
ready shown her strength in the child of two years, 
it would be necessary to conclude that the educa- 
tive and social instincts would be the only differ- 
ence between man and the animal. But no one 
would dare to hold to such an enormity. When 
there is only language, the demarcation between the 
little child and the animal is clearly traced at two 
years. " The organs of articulation," says a phys- 
iologist, "exist in mammifers as well as in man. 
If, then, man articulates and the animals do not, it 
is because an intellectual act comes in in the case 
of man.'' * Is not this recognising the fact that 
language, although it is to be a great instrument of 
the progress of intelligence, is itself the effect of in- 
telligence ? 

Is this saying, as Michelet did,f that the little 

* Beclard, Physiologie, 1884. 
f Michelet, Nos fils, p. -79. 
21 



286 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

child, already very superior to the animal, may be 
represented as being almost from his very birth a lit- 
tle man of perfect, complete, nervous organization ? 
There is some exaggeration in speaking in this 
way. Doubtless on most points children are nearer 
us than we are generally disposed to believe. They 
think more than they can say, as long as the faculty 
of expression is imperfect. With less firmness and 
sureness, their intellectual faculties have already 
the charms that they will keep all through life. 
They reason in their own way, and though their 
conclusions may be founded on slight premises,^ 
nevertheless there is a logical advance ; just as the 
stomach of the new-born babe acts, although it can 
digest only milk. Doubtless a baby's emotions 
have not the intensity that they will acquire later ; 
the vivacity of sensations is proportionate to the 
strength of the sentient being. But in its moder- 
ate proportions, the childish sensibility ranges over 
almost the entire gamut of the feelings of the 
adult. In a word, and without following out the 
enumeration, we may say in a general way that the 
child's faculties differ from those of the man quan- 
titatively rather than qualitatively; or, in other 
words, that the child possesses all of the distinctive 
attributes of human nature, but that he possesses 
them only under reduced forms and in limited 
proportions. And this is enough to justify us in 
not saying with Michelet that the child is already 
a man. 

What we need have no hesitation in saying, is 
that when he has come to the age of four years 
the child has finished his first development, that 



THE SENSE OP SELFHOOD AND PERSONALITY 287 

which, has introduced the beginnings of all where 
there was nothing. If we appeal to the conscious 
states of this age, we shall be convinced that 
none of the essential functions are lacking. The 
later development will have to fortify what is still 
weak and slender, to solidify what is as yet soft 
and without consistence. The senses will make 
new acquisitions each day, and memory will enrich 
their treasures. Knowledge will extend, but the 
instruments are already made. Attention will pro- 
long its power of duration, and will gain strength of 
concentration. Our will shall find in more decided 
and more fixed ideas a more solid and more resist- 
ant support. In a word, all the faculties will en- 
large, and the effect of the growth will be such that 
one could no longer recognise in the abstract gen- 
eralizations of a man of science, or in the moral force 
of an energetic character, the poor little faculties 
that preside over the first efforts of the chikrs rea- 
soning or over the first acts of will and of courage. 
They will be the same faculties, however, with the 
difference that results from the passage from the 
less to the greater; just as the hard, accentuated 
traits of the marked and pronounced physiognomy 
of the mature man are, although unrecognisable, 
the delicate, undecided, indistinct traits that made 
up his smiling, rosy, baby face. Except for the 
new elements that the passions of puberty will oc- 
casion in the young man, the future will only am- 
plify the faculties without increasing the number. 
At four years the child's soul is really all un- 
folded. The intellectual frames are ready; there 
remains but to fill them. All the springs of the 



288 LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 

machine are in place ; there is nothing more but to 
make them act. The sketch demands only to be 
transformed into a picture. The child needs merely 
time, study, and experience, to become really a 
man. In a word, as Aristotle said, nature and early 
education have begun everything ; the part of fu- 
ture education will be to finish it all. 



i^lTALYTICAL mDEX 

:rO COMPAYRB'S INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD 



PART ONE— VoL 35, I. E. S. 



Association of Ideas : 

First appearance in the child, 
292. 

Founded on resemblance, 294. 

Importance of, 291. 

In relating separate impressions, 
293. 

Limits of, 297. 

Mechanical, then analytical, 291. 

Purely verbal associations, 295. 
Attention : 

As stimulated by emotions, 278. 

Characterized as abstraction in 
the child, 2Y5. 

Charm, the source of, 286. 

Curiosity, the intellectual germ 
of, 280. 

Definition of, 273. 

In play, 284. 

In prehension, 288. 

In walking, 287. 

Lacking in imbeciles, 289. 

More intense degree of con- 
sciousness, 272. 



Motive principles of, 283. 
Novelty, a stimulus of, 276. 
Origin of, 278. 
Passive at first, 274. 
Provoked by external impres- 
sions, 278. 
Resulting in fright, 277. 

Consciousness : 

At birth, 54. 

Definite states prepared for, by 
opposed states, 276. 

Degrees of, 87. 

Development in extension, 268. 

First acts of, 55. 

Gradual development of, 266. 

In first two years of life, 267. 

In sucking, 85. 

Law of evolution of, 267. 

Not created by the uncon- 
scious, 270. 

Only mode of existence con- 
ceived of by human mind, 270. 

What is it ? 269. 
289 



290 



LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 



Expression of Emotions: 
Child's power of, 208. 
Cries : 

As expression of suffering, 58. 

Evidence of beginning of sen- 
sibility, 40. 

Explanation of, 90. 
Fear : 

Analogies in observations 
made on animals, 184. 

Caused by what is unfamiliar, 
180. 

Connection with surprise, 184. 

Connection with the intelli- 
gence, 18*7. 

Forms of, 185. 

Of darkness, 181. 

Of imaginary perils, 179. 

Result of experience, 178. 

Result of heredity, 182. 

Synonymous with astonish- 
ment, 180. 
Love : 

Characteristics of child's ego- 
ism, 191. 

Instinctive tendency to, 189. 

Multiplicity of the child's 
emotions, 208. 

Result of parents' love, 190. 

Selfishness its origin, 188. 
Pain : 

Fatigue, l7l. 

Hunger, 169. 

Resulting from organic func- 
tions, 168. 

Resulting from the muscular 
sense, 170, 

Sensations of pain overbal- 
^ ancing those of pleasure, 55. 



Sense impressions disagree- 
able at first, 166, 

Teething, 172. 

Weaning, 172. 
Pleasure : 

As balancing pain, 165. 

As overbalancing pain, 175. 

As resulting from exercise of 
nerves and of muscles, 174. 

Caused by everything new, 
174. 

Source of first pleasure, 173. 
The Smile : 

Causes of the expressive 
smile, 202. 

Date of first smile, 200. 

First smiles automatic mo- 
tions, 196. 
Sympathy : 

Cause of the child's feelings, 
195. 

For animals, 193. 

Relative spontaneity of, 190. 
Tears : 

Accompanied by movements 
of the face, 206. 

A gradual development, 204. 

First date of, 205. 

In absence of emotion, 204. 

Sometimes the accompaniment 
of satisfaction, 207. 

FffiTus, The: 

Affected by heredity, 43. 
Consciousness of, 34. 
Hearing in, 37. 
Intelligence of, 41. 
Psychology of, 32. 
Sleep of, 36. 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



291 



Tactile sensations of, 34. 
Will of, 33. 

Hearing : 

Distance and direction of 

sound, 144. 
Effect of musical sounds, 142. 
Effects of sound on the child's 

nerves, 140. 
First auditory sensations, 138. 
Impression produced by human 

voice, 143. 
Insensible progression of, 139. 
Moderating power of sounds, 141. 
Noise for its own sake, 142. 
Eeasons for child's temporary 

deafness, 137. 
Heredity : 

From the mother's brain, 33. 
Theories of, 41. 

Imagination : 

As explaining the child's ex- 
aggerations, 262. 

Causes of activity of in the child, 
263. 

Characteristics of representa- 
tive imagination, 242. 

Child's delight in fancies, 254. 

Child's power of, 243. 

Creative imagination as aesthet- 
ic sense, lacking in the child, 
260. 

Difficulties of observation in 
the child, 244. 

Formation of the image, 240. 

In dreams, 245. 

In personification of inanimate 
things, 252. 



In primitive peoples, 251. 

Interpretations of drawings, 246. 

Of the child as narrator, 249. 

Kepresentative and active, 240. 

Shown in child's liking for 
stories, 247. 

Shown in the child's dramatic 
plays, 257. 

Shown when the child talks, 
247. 

Transition to inventive imagina- 
tion, 250. 
Instincts : 

In animals, 50. 

In children, 52. 

Blindness of, 80. 

Defined, 53. 

Pre-existent to external excita- 
tion, 81, 

Rapid modification of, 85. 

Transition from instinctive need 
for nourishment to passion 
of gluttony, 176. 

Memory : 

Absence of language one cause 
of uncertainty, 227. 

An aid to language, 228. 

Causes of weakness, 217. 

Date of first remembrances, 21 0. 

Development of, 214. 

Differences of, 237. 

Hindered by overburdened con- 
dition, 230. 

Impersonal character in the 
child, 225. 

Importance of, 237. 

Influence of presence of things 
seen, 221. 



292 



LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 



In imbeciles, 236. 

Literal character in the child, 

235. 
Necessary Conditions : 

Appreciation of duration of 
time, 220. 

Co-ordination of successive 
impressions, 218. 

Feeling of the ego, 219. 

Forgetfulness, 231. 

Recognition of sensations, 226. 

Repetition of perceptions, 216. 
Passivity in the child, 221. 
Physiological reasons for child's 

facility of, 229. 
Preceding consciousness, 225. 
Psychological reasons, 230. 
Reasons for differences in date, 

212. 
Vividness of child's remem- 
brances, 232. 
Movements : 

Child's extreme motor activity, 

63. 
Classification, 67. 
Developing the consciousness, 86. 
First manifestations of life, 61. 
History of, 94. 
Motor faculty directed by habit, 

87. 
Psychological value of, 65. 
Regularity of, 64. 
Autoinaiic Movements : 

Character of, 70. 

Duration of, 71. 

List of, 91. 
Instinctive Movements : 

Likeness of, 48. 

Nature of, 81. 



Sucking, 82. 

Weakness of, 83. 
Involuntary Movements : 

Different forms of, 67. 
Prehension : 

Preyer's observations, 93. 

Spontaneous at first, 92. 

Transition to voluntary, 94. 
Rejlex Movements : 

Cause of weakness, 73. 

Condition of, 77. 

Degrees of, 77. 

Difficulty of, 73. 

Examples, 75. 

Importance of, 73. 
Spontaneous Movements: 

Explanation of, 69. 
Voluntary Movements : 

Requirements of, 68. 

Sight : 

Accommodation not immediate, 

113. 
Apprenticeship for, 107. 
Blindness of the new-born child, 

98. 
Colour : 
Experiments, 117. 
First colours distinguished, 

118. 
First revelation of sensible 

world, 121. 
Followed by perception of 

form, 122. 
Perception of, 117. 
Progressive evolution of sense 
of, 121. 
Developed by muscular organ- 
ism, 111. 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



293 



Early field of, 103. • 

Early range of, 104. 

First participation of the brain, 

115. 
Hereditary theory of, 119. 
Influence of moral causes, 125. 
In imbeciles and idiots, 126. 
Involving attention, 125. 
Light : 

Duration of dislike for, 101. 

First manifestations of a de- 
sire for, 101. 

Natural dislike for, 99. 
Motions of the eyes involuntary, 

110. 
Motions of the eyes regulated, 

108. 
Moving objects, 112. 
Necessary motions, 107. 
Perception of Distances : 

Acquired, not innate, 127. 

Attention needed for, 125. 

Observations on people born 
blind, 128. 

Preyer's observations, 127. 

Result of experience, 132. 

Yisual and tactile impressions 
combined, 132. 
Recognition of persons, 122. 
Visual perception of space, 

126. 
Smell : 

Causes for slow development, 

151. 
Child's attitude towards, 153. 



Value of, 152. 

Weakest of all sensations, 152. 

Taste : 

Association of the tactile sensi- 
bility, 146. 

Child's liking for sweets, 147. 

Connection with smell, 150. 

Distinction between different 
tastes, 146. 

Impressions first to appear, 145. 

Natural likes and dislikes, 150. 

Repugnance for new foods, 148. 
Touch : 

Affected by thermal impressions, 
156. 

Analysis of, 155. 

As annex of the muscular sense, 
160. 

Character of impressions, 154. 

Its relation to the idea of the 
ego, 161. 

Painful impressions in distin- 
guishing subject from object, 
163. 

Passive and active impressions, 
155. 

Pleasure of, 157. 

Preparation for the notion of 
exteriority, 161. 
The New-born Child; 

A sentient being, 29. 

A spinal being, 49. 

A subject for psychologists, 44. 

Intelligence lacking at first, 49. 



294 



LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 



PART TWO 
LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD— Vol. 53 of L E. S. 



Character : 

Absence of moral inteution in 
child's actions, 190. 

Errors of Conception : 

Child's independence of hered- 
ity, 188. 
Optimists and pessimists 

equally wrong, 189. 
Original innocence of the 

child, 188. 
Unfailing goodness of dispo- 
sition, 188. 
Curiosity : 

Astonishment the starting-point 
of, 21. 

Connection with fear of the un- 
familiar, 20. 

Definition of, 18. 

Equalled by child's credulity, 23. 

Importance in education of will, 
27. 

Importance in intellectual edu- 
cation, 26. 

In animals, 17. 

Mere chattering in child's ques- 
tions, 25. 

Not a scientific interest at first, 
19. 

Often only mobility of mind, 
25. 

Resulting in collections, 22. 

To understand origin of things, 
23. 



Development of Child's Facul- 
ties: 

Affected by heredity, 280. 

Difference between child and 
man quantitative rather than 
qualitative, 286. 

Education and nature in co- 
operation, 283. 

Effect of education, 279. 

Evolution a verified fact in re- 
gard to individuals, 279. 

Inborn individuality, 280. 

Question of sex discussed, 280. 

Superiority of child over ani- 
mals, 284. 

Faults : 
Anger : 

Calling forth outward actions, 

208. 
Differences in individuals, 210. 
Leading to a wish to injure, 

209. 
Often jealousy breaking forth, 

207. 
Produced in connection with 
every disagreeable impres- 
sion, 208. 
Varying signs of, 210. 
Anti-social instincts in the child, 

211. 
Cruelty explained by ignorance, 
194. 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



295 



Danger of exaggerating influence 

of heredity, 213. 
Different opinions concerning 

faults, 192. 
Difficulty of separating heredity 

from education, 212. 
Egoism, one of essential forces 

of life, 204. 
Falsehood : 

Caused by fear, 198. 

Caused by imi4,ation, 198. 

Not hereditary or universal, 
196. 

Only a play, 197. 
Innate dispositions really bad, 

205. 
Inordinate appetites influenced 

by example, 202. 
Jealousy : 

First occasions for, 207. 

Leading to envy and hate, 
20Y. 

Limited range in the child, 
206. 
Mistake of judging child '^by the 

adult, 204. 
Mobility of the child only nat- 
ural, 203. 
Natural predisposition to little 

ruses, 199. 
Power of simulation in older 

children, 200. 
Results of education, 194. 
Theft, result of child's lack of 

idea of property, 201. 
Vanity, caused by indiscretion 

of parents, 203. 
Waywardness, manifestation of 

character, 204. 



Imitation : 
Advantage in proportion to 

strength, 16., 
At first clumsy and awkward, 9. 
At first the result of irresistible 

suggestion, 8. 
Causes of inequality, 15. 
Child's desire to distinguish him- 
self, 15. 
Child's pleasure in, 11. 
Conscious and intelligent, but 

not voluntary, 10. 
Date of first motions of, 3. 
Definition of, 2. 

Essential means of education, 14. 
Examples of early imitation, 5. 
Favourable conditions in the 

child, 9. 
Importance in education, 2. 
Precedence of imitations of 

sound, 4. 
Presupposing perception of act 

imitated, 2. 
Simple, then complicated, 13. 
Suggestive and instinctive, 

though voluntary, 13. 
Sympathy an auxiliary of, 14. 
Transition from the conscious to 

the voluntary, 12. 
Unconscious and automatic, 5. 

Judgment. 

Aided by the child's attitude, 
35. 

Analysis of, 42. 

Association of diflPerent remem- 
brances, 31. 

Association of like remem- 
brances, 31. 



296 



LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 



Association of remembrances 

called forth by needs, 32. 
Clear judgments expressed in 

incomplete propositions, 41. 
Comparison of the child and the 

animal, 34. 
Developed by observation, 43. 
Distinction between judgments 

of being and judgments of 

relation, 43. 
Explanation of child's incorrect 

propositions, 40. 
Individual at first, 44. 
Inductive force of, 35. 
Negation following affirmation, 

45. 
Proceeding from natural spon- 
taneity, 30. 
Shown in the actions of every 

little child, 30. 
Shown in every clear perception, 

34. 
Two distinct periods of, 29. 

Language : 

Cries : 
Interjections only articulate 

cries, 100. 
Meaning often lacking, 75. 
Time required for the child to 
introduce meaning, 76. 
Difficulties in acquisition, 63. 
First sounds unintelligible to 

child himself, 67. 
First use of intelligence in, 68. 
Gesture : 
An aid to speech, 83. 
Association gives meaning to, 
82. 



Date of first intentional ges- 
tures, 79. 

Difference between compre- 
hension of gestures and of 
words, 80. 

Intelligent, before child speaks, 
81. 

Understanding signs preced- 
ing the employment, 79. 

Voice first used as an aid to 
gesture, 83. 
Many sounds that disappear, 76. 
Mechanism of, 64. 
Speech : 

Action of brain necessary, 
66. 

Affected by imperfection of 
acoustic faculties, 107. 

Appropriation of words, 84. 

Called forth by speech, 77. 

Comparison of the child with 
the deaf-mute, 113. 

Comprehension of the speech 
of others, 78. 

Date of first words, 72. 

Double character of first vocal 
manifestations, 73. 

Efforts at articulation before 
the child is able, 106. 

Employment of direct and in- 
direct object, 115. 

First joining of substantive 
and verb, 112. 

First progress in emitting 
sounds, 91. 

Hearing necessary to speech, 
65. 

Imitation, the guide of, 66. 

Importance of imitation, 105. 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



297 



Introduction of meaning into 
sounds before insignificant, 
98. 
Invention of words : 
Child's initiative in, 86. 
Conditions favourable to, 

101. 
Creation of onomatopoeias, 

99. 
Facts to prove, 89. 
Generalizations explained, 

104. 
In varying meaning of 

words, 102. 
]\Iutilations of words, 96. 
Power of chance associa- 
tions, 104. 
Three cases to distinguish, 
90. 
Material found by a sort of 

inspiration, 93. 
Parallel between the child's 
diflBculties and impediments 
of speech in adults, 69. 
Participation of logical sense, 

109. 
Two ways in which the child 

learns, 84. 
Use of the negative, 112. 
Spontaneous actions becoming 

reflex, 16. 
Stages in the evolution of lan- 
guage, 72. 
The work of parents in the 
progress of, 94. 

Moral Sense, The: 

Affectionate feelings the start- 
ing-point, 158. 



Analysis of the formation of, 1*77. 

Appreciation of the conse- 
quences of actions, 11 Q. 

Complex elements of emotions 
apparently simple, 167. 

Conscience, the result of educa- 
tion, 179. 

Defects, the result of defects in 
education, 183. 

Entirely personal character in 
the child, 171. 

Experience necessary to the 
formation of, 173. 

First form fear of parental 
authority, 158. 

Gaps explained by circumstances 
of education, 157. 

Influence of surroundings and 
education, 154. 

Mistaken for obedience from 
habit or from fear, 164. 

Morality of interest, 174. 

Most complicated and delicate 
subject to handle, 154. 

Nascent stages sometimes re- 
main, 169. 

Natural tendency of the child to 
obey, 160. 

Not really found in the child, 
162. 

Part of affection in development 
of, 164. 

Presupposes multitude of pro- 
gressive steps, 171. 

Relative innateness of, 184. 

Rules of action confounded with 
will of parents, 171. 

Social life a school of morality, 
175. 



298 



LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 



Sympathy a principle of moral 

direction, 165. 
Tendency to apply law to others, 

161. 
Transition from instinctive ego- 
ism to disinterested feelings, 
169. 
Yirtuous actions the source of 
moral consciousness, 173. 
Morbid Tendencies: 

Character perverted by disease, 

246. 
Convulsions : 
A real mental malady, 228. 
Only form of madness possi- 
ble at first, 229. 
Sometimes the result of acci- 
dent, 230. 
Eccentricities often have morbid 

causes, 24Y. 
Hallucination : 

Accounted for by the vivacity 
of child's imagination, 238. 
An element of insanity, 239. 
Compared with hallucinations 

of animals, 234. 
DiflBculty of observation of, 

234. 
Examples in children, 235. 
Insanity of external percep- 
tion, 231. 
Nightmare a form of, 238. 
Of sight and of hearing, 239. 
Physical and mental causes 

of, 232. 
Rare in children, 233. 
R61e of imagination in, 233. 
Second step of madness in 
the child, 231. 



Insanity : 

Before the age of three, 224. 
Causes : 
Action of heredity, 256. 
Fear, 255. 

Inertness of will, 227. 
Intemperance of parents, 

257. 
Physical causes predomi- 
nant, 253. 
Poverty of child's remem- 
brances, 227. 
Pound in children, 221. 
Frequency of cataleptic insan- 
ity, 243. 
Hesitation of observers in ad- 
mitting the existence of in- 
sanity in little children, 224. 
In animals, 230. 
May be innate, 225. 
Moral insanity more frequent 

than intellectual, 244. 
Statistics as to ages when most 

frequent, 221. 
Types found in child under 
milder forms, 251. 
Mania : 

Examples of, 240. 
May disappear in time, 243. 
Monomania unknown in chil- 
dren, 241. 
Most usual form of madness 
in children, 239. 
Often lurk unperceived, 250. 
Suicide rare but not exceptional, 

248. 
Weakness of childish intelli- 
gence a guarantee against 
madness, 226. 



ANALYTICAL INDEX 



299 



Play: 

Activity the source of joy, 144. 
Antedating talking and walking, 

141. 
Imitation an important principle 

of, 143. 
Instinct of construction and of 

destruction in, 150. 
Instinct of investigation in, 148. 
Part of affectionate feelings in, 

146. 
Part of imagination in, 14Y. 
Part of social feelings in, 145. 
Part of voluntary activity in, 151. 
Pleasure in aping grciwn people, 

145. 
Precocity of the child's instinct 

for, 142. 
Significance of, 143. 

Reasoning : 

By analogy, 48. 

Causality in the child of four 
years, 52. 

Conception of space compara- 
tively early, 52. 

Danger of being deceived by 
appearances, 53. 

Early traces of, 36. 

Employment of means to an end, 
36. 

Examples in young children, 37. 

Examples of induction, 48. 

First reasonings of causality, 51. 

Inference from particular to par- 
ticular, 46. 

Notion of finality, 52. 
, Real search for causal activity, 
37. 



Remembrances mistaken for, 54. 
Stages of induction, 47. 
Transition from judgment, 46. 

Sense of Selfhood: 

A gradual development, 276. 

Antedating the use of " I " and 
"me," 265. 

Confusion in Preyer's theory, 
261. 

Conscious facts the starting- 
point, 269. 

Consciousness of being a causa- 
tive force, 274. 

Formed when successive states 
of consciousness have been 
connected by memory, 269. 

Made distinct but not formed 
by speech, 266. 

Part of education in forming 
personality, 275. 

Part of language in forming the 

ego, 263. 
Part of will in determining self- 
hood, 272. 
Repetition of phenomena of 
consciousness necessary, 270. 
Sudden crises in development of, 
276. 

Virtues : 

Generosity and miserliness, 214. 
Good inclinations by the side of 

bad, 214. 
Remorse found towards age of 

six or seven, 218. 
Sense of justice at first related 

to the self, 218. 
Social sensibility, 217. 



300 



LATER INFANCY OF THE CHILD 



Sympathy extended to every- 
thing, 215. 

Tenderness in the presence of 
suffering, 216. 

Walking : 

Above all, a question of physical 
strength, 131. 

Apprenticeship necessary, 132. 

Learning to stand dependent on 
instinct, imitation, and pleas- 
ure in action, 133. 

Participation of the moral facul- 
ties, 139. 

Participation of the will, 140. 

Part of exercise in development 
of, 137. 

Part of instinct, 131. 

Part of moral personality, 274. 

Retarded in the case of idiots, 
140. 

Rhythm of walking determined 
by instinct, 135. 

Suddenness of development at 
the last, 137. 

Variations in the date of first 
step, 134. 
Weaknesses op Child's Mind: 

Causes : 
Absence of reflection, 60. 
Chance ruling child's mind, 58. 
Inconstancy of impressions, 59. 
Indistinct notions, 57. 
Slight disposition to be logical, 

58. 
Small amount of knowledge, 
56. 

Often only clumsiness of expres- 
sion, 54. 



Only defects of a period of 
growth, 61. 
Will: 

Causes of its prompt and im- 
petuous character, 119. 

Choice between several desires 
or motives, 120. 

Date of first voluntary activity, 
124. 

Hypnotism of the little child, 
129. 

Independent of movement, 121. 

In determining sense of self- 
hood, 272. 

In development of conscious- 
ness, 120. 

In play, 151. 

Involuntary and deliberate in- 
hibitions, 121. 

Involved in acquisition of lan- 
guage, 126. 

In walking, 140. 

Not necessarily seen in holding 
the head up, 125. 

Possible development of spon- 
taneous inhibition, 122. 

Shown by immediate execution 
of the act, 119. 

Shown in refusal to perform an 
act, 120. 

Shown in the co-ordination of 
movements, 127. 

Signs of bad will in acquisition 
of language, 127. 

Taking possession of acts before 
automatic, 123. 

Transition from instinct and 
automatism, 123. 

Weakness in the little child, 129. 



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